By Parker Heinlein
Outdoors columnist
I’m a big fan of wilderness.
I like huge expanses of wild, undeveloped land into which I can disappear or just imagine doing so.
Until recently I didn’t think you could have enough wilderness. After all, it’s not something that can be manufactured, it can only be preserved.
Then I heard a rancher ask officials from the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge not to designate any more land on the refuge as wilderness.
He said doing so would increase elk depredation on his land and make managing the problem even more difficult than it is now.
He was angry. You could hear it in his voice and see it on his face.
During hunting season, he said, the elk seek refuge on those portions of the CMR already designated wilderness. There they remain out of reach to all but the most hardcore of hunters. Game retrieval is extremely difficult in wilderness areas where even wheeled carts are off-limits.
Hunters looking to fill a cow tag are seldom up to the challenge of packing the meat out on their backs and few have ready access to pack horses. Consequently, the elk hiding in the CMR’s wilderness and wilderness study areas are relatively safe during the hunting season.
And once the season ends they move back to the agricultural lands to feed.
In other parts of Montana, landowners suffer similar problems. Elk seek refuge on private land where no hunting is allowed and ravage farmland once the hunting season ends.
Elk become more difficult to manage as more folks move into their habitat.
In southern Phillips County, however, the problem isn’t development, but rather the lack thereof. It’s wild, rugged, beautiful country, but it’s been grazed and cut with roads for more than a century.
It’s also very small in scope compared to the more traditional wilderness areas in Montana. About the time you realize you’ve entered it, you’re already out the other side.
I suspect whoever suggested designating wilderness areas on the CMR has never disappeared into the Beartooths, hiked the Bob Marshall or gotten lost in the Scapegoat.
Perhaps wilderness designation on the CMR is the result of some federal bureaucrat’s feelings of guilt over running the refuge more for livestock than for wildlife.
Whatever the reason, designating more wilderness on the CMR will only create further hardship for those folks who eke out a living in this spare land.
I’m all for wilderness and all that it implies. Just don’t try to tell me what’s wilderness when it’s not. I know the difference.