Wilderness WILDERNESS WATCH eeping Wilderness Wild WATCHER The Quarterly Newsletter of Wilderness Watch Volume 32 • Number 2 • Summer 2021 Should We Poison the Scapegoat? by Gary Macfarlane he Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife review of actions that are done pursuant to section 4(c) and Parks (FWP) recently put forth a five- of the Wilderness Act. The extensive helicopter and other year plan to poison 67 miles of the North motorized equipment and transport proposed in this TFork of the Blackfoot River and three lakes in the project are activities that are presumptively prohibited Scapegoat Wilderness. The Scapegoat is the southern in Wilderness under Section 4(c). … If a CE can be used anchor of the famed Bob Marshall Wilderness Com- in Wilderness to exempt projects of this size and scope, plex, an area of 1.6 utilizing a wide array of million unbroken acres generally prohibited uses of designated Wil- and significantly altering derness that is home ecological processes, then to rare species such as one has to wonder if any grizzly bears, wolves, project ever would rise to and wolverines. the level of an EA or EIS in Wilderness no matter The proposal poses a how harmful. myriad of problems beyond poisoning The background behind streams and lakes this shows how ill-ad- and much of the life vised the plan is, beyond that lives in them. its inappropriate impacts There’s the 93 he- to Wilderness. There licopter flights and North Fork of the Blackfoot River, Scapegoat Wilderness. USFS were no trout or likely landings, plus the use other fish historically of motorboats, pumps, above the North Fork and gas-powered generators—all in a place where Falls. Rather, fish were planted there some 100 years machines and motors are banned. Then there’s the ago through historic stocking, or “bucket biology,” by failure to seriously consider alternatives such as fore- the agencies and the general public. Even the State’s going the use of motorized equipment, or returning EA tacitly admits there is no good evidence fish were the area to its naturally fishless state. ever there, though it tries to shoehorn in the fact that one fish with westslope genetics was found a few Wilderness Watch years ago, more likely the result of “bucket biology” and 14 other rather than an indication of historic persistence. No In This Issue... groups submitted others have since been found, unlike other places comments oppos- Poison the Scapegoat? 1 with remnant populations of native fish. ing the proposal, President’s Message 2 stating, in part: Even though the U.S. Forest Service (FS) is charged On the Watch 4 with protecting the Scapegoat Wilderness, it has In the Courts 6 [T]he adminis- been largely AWOL on the proposal, deferring Wild Voices 7 tration has issued instead to the State of Montana, which has no Membership Message 7 an order requiring Should We Poison the Scapegoat? continued on page 3 President’s Message he New Normal. I’m sure by this point you have heard that term used to describe what our lives will be like after the Covid-19 pandemic. Understand- WILDERNESS WATCH eeping Wilderness Wild Tably, we should expect that after prolonged events such as this pandemic there will be a lasting impact on our econ- omy, our social interactions, and our visions for the future. The Wilderness Watcher We will develop different ways and systems to adjust to is the quarterly newsletter of the new challenges. Wilderness Watch, America’s leading conservation organization dedicated Too frequently the agencies that manage our public lands solely to protecting the lands and Wilderness system feel the need to re-create environ- and waters in the National Wilderness ments within a landscape to establish a new normal. Whether it is manipulating and Preservation System. maneuvering species around or in or out, or selecting specific aspects of an area as desirable and others as undesirable, or making single, blanket decisions over an area Board of Directors that is comprised of diverse species and habitats, the solutions attempted illustrate Louise Lasley, NM President the human claim to a knowledge and expertise that is superior to thousands of years Marty Almquist, MT Vice President of nature’s successful progress in finding and excelling in ways to maintain Earth’s Gary Macfarlane, ID Secretary Treasurer ecological systems. Unfortunately, many of these attempts or plans to improve habi- René Voss, CA Talasi Brooks, ID tat or re-establish species on our public lands, including in Wilderness, are to correct Franz Camenzind, WY earlier attempts to improve habitat or re-establish species, and may likely continue Mark Pearson, CO the cycle of unintended consequences and require even more counteractions. Mark Peterson, WI Cyndi Tuell, AZ It is a struggle for us to keep a positive attitude when we watch things around Howie Wolke, MT us fall apart, to see our familiar landscapes and environments, whether at home or on our nearest wildlands, assume the unfamiliar, a different look or a differ- ent function. We wonder if we had a broader perspective, a deeper understanding, Executive Director we wouldn’t have to face these reoccurring steps to restore something that we are George Nickas responsible for getting out of kilter to begin with. Staff Attorney For me the greatest beauty of the National Wilderness Preservation System is the Dana Johnson idea that humans do not have the capability to improve upon nature and the cen- turies, millennia our Wilderness lands have had adapting to climate, influencing Conservation Director the presence or absence of particular flora and fauna, and being shaped by natural Kevin Proescholdt fire. Humans have made and are making very large and consequential decisions on most of the earth’s surface—on land and in the oceans. The Wilderness system’s Membership & Development protected lands are a refugia from our choices and leave the land and species to Brett Haverstick continue their much longer-lived experience with finding the right path to meet Communications & Outreach the new challenges. Dawn Serra My ongoing relationship with Wilderness Watch is based on the trust and under- standing that they will be there with the experience, expertise, and passion to not Advisory Council only be my voice, but the voice for many who want our wilderness lands to survive Magalen Bryant the constant onslaught of management attempts at a new normal. WW is aware Dr. Derek Craighead of the legal, social and environmental consequences of such attempts, and can make Dr. M. Rupert Cutler sure our voices and concerns are represented and considered. Dr. Roderick Nash Like the glimmer of hope that came with the recent new CDC guidelines for re- laxing mask-wearing, maybe we can now, individually or collectively, breathe easier knowing our health is still being protected. And with the continuing pressures on Wilderness Watch the National Wilderness Preservation System, we know that Wilderness Watch P.O. Box 9175 provides a beacon of hope as we count on their unflagging work to protect our Missoula, MT 59807 S Phone: (406) 542-2048 valuable wildlands. www.wildernesswatch.org [email protected] —Louise Lasley 2 Wilderness Watcher • Summer 2021 Should We Poison the Scapegoat? (continued from page 1) jurisdiction over Wilderness. The FS’s recent scoping The State’s EA also maintains that angling opportu- letter and short public comment period suggested that nities will be improved by removing the current fish this massive proposal that violates the core precepts and stocking with westslope cutthroats. That may be of Wilderness could be approved via a Categorical a real reason behind this proposal, along with pre- Exclusion (CE), and, that instead of completing an venting the westslope cutthroat trout from gaining environmental impact statement or even an environ- Endangered Species Act listing. Through their stock- mental assessment, the FS will likely rely mainly on ing of non-native fish, fish and game departments the State EA, which not did not evaluate the impacts across the range of the westslope cutthroat trout have to Wilderness. endangered this and other subspecies of cutthroat through hybridization. Now, the state fish and game In an ironic twist, the State’s EA has as its subtitle agencies think they know better and want to correct “Reclamation of the North Fork Blackfoot River up- past errors, Wilderness be damned. stream of North Fork Falls for Westslope Cutthroat Trout.” According to the first definition of reclama- In 2010, in another westslope cutthroat trout project tion from the online Free Dictionary, reclamation is in Montana, a FWP rotenone poisoning operation in agriculture “the conversion went awry, accidentally poi- of desert, marsh, or other soning fish outside of the waste land into land suitable Meddling with nature is targeted stretch of Cherry for cultivation.” That fits in fraught with peril, especially Creek, a tributary to the perfectly with the way state Madison River. FWP never fish and game agencies “plant” in Wilderness which is figured out how it happened, fish and view aquatic ecosys- supposed to serve as a but nonetheless, the agency tems. Indeed, these agencies is surprisingly certain it will and the FS refer to fishless check against our species’ never happen again. This high mountain streams and hubris and lack of restraint. supposedly “controlled” FWP lakes as “barren,” even though poisoning project was on a these areas have a profusion much smaller scale than what of life, from macro-inverte- is planned for the Scapegoat brates to amphibians, all of which will be killed by Wilderness. The FWP suspicion that rotenone got the poison rotenone that is proposed for killing the into the ground water and later resurfaced downstream “undesirable” trout currently living there.