Guest opinion: A River Runs Through It Act offers hope for the Blackfoot Valley

For more than two decades, people in Seeley Lake, Ovando, and Lincoln have worked through one of the hardest questions in Montana: how do we care for public lands in a way that respects the many different people who depend on them?  

There has never been just one answer.  

These lands support timber jobs and rural economies. They provide places to hunt, fish, hike, ride horses, mountain bike, snowmobile and use off-highway vehicles. They hold some of the wildest country left in the Lower 48 and support some of the most iconic wildlife. And they surround communities that live with the realities of wildfire and forest management every year.  

That is why the proposal now called the A River Runs Through It Act matters.  

Earlier this month, Rep. Ryan Zinke announced legislation based on long-running, locally developed efforts that grew from negotiation among Montanans who often began with very different ideas about public lands.  

The resulting legislation will manage different parts of the landscape according to these diverse interests. It creates designated areas for forest restoration, adds to the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat Wilderness, and expands motorized and non-motorized recreation areas. It would also resolve the status of Wilderness Study Areas near Helmville and Ovando that have been debated for decades.  

This only happened because people representing conservation groups, the timber industry, outfitters, hunters and anglers, snowmobilers, trail riders, local governments and businesses kept coming back to the table. Finally, we stood together in Smoke Elser’s historic Missoula barn with Rep. Zinke to introduce this combined proposal – merging an updated Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship proposal with the Lincoln Prosperity Proposal into the A River Runs Through It Act.   

We are grateful to Congressman Zinke for carrying our hard work forward in Washington, D.C.   

Rep. Zinke is delivering on the promise he made to make public lands a priority. He stood with us as we rejected a plan to sell millions of public lands last summer. Now he’s trying to codify permanent protections that will help keep Montana the state we love for future generations.   

Our leaders in Washington have long argued that decisions about public lands should reflect the knowledge and experience of the people who live, work, and recreate here. This bill gives them exactly what they’re looking for.  

At a time when national politics is increasingly defined by division, the Blackfoot offers a different example: people with competing interests and a shared love of the land staying at the table long enough to find common ground. And to even become friends.   

That Montana way of solving problems has conserved the landscapes, and way of life, that make us proud to live here. Much of our beloved Bob Marshall Wilderness came into being because members of both parties representing Montana in Washington responded to similar calls to protect a place that is synonymous with our state.   

Now, Sen. Steve Daines, Sen. Tim Sheehy, and Rep. Troy Downing have the chance to join us and Congressman Zinke to carry on that tradition. This is their chance to show Washington there’s a better way forward than partisan mudslinging by advancing the plan we’ve built for future generations in the Blackfoot River.   

Jack Rich, Rich’s Montana Guest Ranch, Seeley Lake; Barb Cestero, Montana State Director for the Wilderess Society, Bozeman; Bill Cyr, Lincoln resident & retired Forester, DNRC, Lincoln; Russ Ehnes, President, Montana Trail Vehicle Riders Association, Great Falls; Jim Stone, Rolling Stone Ranch, Ovando.