Excellent commentary from PERC’s Terry Anderson on the scandal caused by National Park Ranger Alex Seinkiewicz, who urged enviro activists to trespass on private property:

For the eight years that President Barack Obama reigned in Washington, environmentalists cheered his agenda. There was his War on Coal, his signing of the Paris Climate Accord, his executive order giving EPA regulatory authority over all Waters of the United States (WOTUS), and his creation of more national monuments than any previous president.

“With President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, conservatives in favor of less government regulation are cheering. In a matter of months he has declared war on the War on Coal, withdrawn the United States from the Paris Accord, rescinded the WOTUS executive order giving EPA power to regulate virtually every drop of water in the United States, and sent Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, on a mission to decide whether national monuments created in the past 25 years should be “rescinded, resized or modified in order to better benefit our public lands.”

Less well known on the national scene, but visible to those of us who live in Montana, are both administrations’ stance on private property rights and access to public lands. Back when politics was more civil, land management agencies cooperated with private owners whose land provides access to national forests. They purchased or negotiated easements and acknowledged the good will of landowners who allowed access, some literally through their front yards…

Such cooperation, however, changed under the Obama administration as the Forest Service took a more strident approach in asserting claims to “traditional public access” routes. The dramatic change is reflected in a posting by Yellowstone District Ranger Alex Sienkiewicz who publicly advocated “NEVER ask permission to access the National Forest Service through a traditional route shown on our maps EVEN if that route crosses private land. NEVER ASK PERMISSION; NEVER SIGN IN. … By asking permission, one undermines public access rights and plays into their lawyers’ trap of establishing a history of permissive access.”

Read Mr. Anderson’s full opinion in the Missoulian.

We are proud to report that this session saw positive outcomes for improving Montanan’s property rights.

“We were able to enact several positive changes that protect and enhance our property rights,” said Chuck Denowh, UPOM’s Policy Director.  “And we successfully stopped every piece of legislation that attempted to take away our rights.”

Click here to download the scorecard.

The recent decision by the Montana Supreme Court in the Mountain Water case, in which the Court reversed itself from an earlier decision, has set new precedents that weaken the property rights for all Montanans.  It’s apparent to us that the decision was more politically motivated than grounded in the law—and we’re not alone, Justice Jim Rice described the Court’s conduct as “apparently hell-bent on condemnation” in his dissenting opinion.

This is an example of why Montana’s Supreme Court is ranked so poorly nationally.  Each time it reverses itself—and it does so often, hundreds of times in the last two decades—it creates more uncertainty about what the law really is.  And when the Court is viewed as a political animal—active in creating law rather than just interpreting it—Montanans lose faith that they’ll get a fair shake.

A cadre of  radical environmental groups have set their sites on farmers and ranchers along the Yellowstone River in Eastern Montana in an attempt to eliminate irrigation projects in at least five locations on the river.

The first attack is against the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project between Glendive and Sidney where the out-of-state environmental group Defenders of Wildlife has sued the Army Corps of Engineers to remove a 107-year-old diversion wier.  That wier is the starting point for a massive irrigation project that serves nearly 60,000 acres in Montana and North Dakota, and is the backbone for a $10 million sugar industry that supports hundreds of jobs in Sidney.  There are at least four other irrigation projects on the Yellowstone that environmental groups plan to target.

These attacks are nothing more than a shameless abuse of the Courts and federal administrative processes.  And it’s just one more example of the widening War on Ag being waged by environmental groups intent on driving agriculture out of Montana.

If you’re in Billings on June 30 you can do something about it.  The Army Corps is holding an EIS hearing at 5:30 pm at the Lincoln Center.  You can go to submit your public comment, which will be come part of the official record and help guide the Army Corps decision..  If you are unable to attend a meeting, you can send your comments via email to cenwo-planning@usace.army.mil.

Check out what UPOM has been up to and what we’ve got planned for the coming years by downloading our annual report, available by clicking here.

Opposition is growing to a proposal to designate a huge area of land as the Upper Missouri River Heritage Area.  Recently, the Fergus County Commission unanimously voted to be left out of the proposal being pushed by Cascade County Commissioner Jane Weber.

National Heritage Areas are designations connected to the National Parks Service.  Though administered locally, and not by the NPS, Heritage Area designations can have implications on private property rights for landowners in and near the Area designation.  Examples from other Heritage Areas around the country show that local governments are often pressured to change land use policies after a Heritage Area has been designated.  Additionally, the Heritage Board, the new layer of government set up to administer the Heritage Area, has the authority (and funding provided by the federal government) to make land purchases, which eliminate those properties from the tax rolls.

The Fergus County Commission discussed the Upper Missouri River Heritage Area at their April 22 meeting.  “It’s alarming to me that someone draws a circle around Fergus County and no one here is consulted or asked to give input,” said Commissioner Ross Butcher.

“We already have a Monument boundary and the Wild and Scenic River designation.  Why do we need another designation on top of what’s already there?” added Commissioner Carl Seilstad.

The proposed Area boundaries include land in Fergus, Chouteau, Cascade, and Lewis & Clark counties, most of it private property.

Last year, the Wilks brothers opened access across their property to allow the public access to the Upper Missouri River Breaks Monument.  It was a good-faith effort as part of a land exchange they were proposing to the BLM.  Their proposal was a generous one—they were offering more acreage to the BLM, and property that had better public access (the public land they proposed to exchange for is only accessible by aircraft).

BLM has refused to negotiate this land exchange amid opposition from environmental groups.  So in response, in an oped appearing today in the Great Falls Tribune, Farris Wilks has announced they will no longer allow access through their property to the Upper Missouri River Breaks.  Mr. Wilks writes:

While we will close our gates in the coming days, we continue to stand ready to engage with the BLM and the interested public to craft an agreeable exchange that will provide permanent public access to the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument in the future.

It’s a disappointing trend that while Montana sportsmen are clamoring for increased access to public land, and landowners are making offers to increase access, the BLM is refusing to even consider the proposal.

Under a new proposal from the National Park Service, Yellowstone Park bison that have been exposed to brucellosis could be transferred to testing facilities at locations across Montana.  The first proposed location is on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

To be clear, these are animals that have not been ruled brucellosis free.  The proposal is to quarantine and test the animals for the disease for a period of time, after which they would be released as wild, free-roaming bison on the Reservation.

Rule 1 in preventing a disease’s proliferation is to isolate the disease to one area.  It makes no sense to transfer brucellosis-exposed bison to other parts of Montana.

UPOM has strongly objected to this proposal for the obvious dangers it presents to Montana’s agriculture economy.  Moreover, the NPS has not taken into account the risks to property damage that free-roaming bison present to neighboring landowners.

You can read UPOM’s comments by clicking here.