Interior Department 'review' threatens Montana’s national monuments | Nicolle Fugere

So when the Department of the Interior announced it was "reviewing" the rules that keep these places the way they are, I had questions.

In June, Interior opened a 60-day public comment period on the standards its agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, use to manage wild country. Four categories of land are in play: designated wilderness, areas being studied for wilderness protection, areas recommended for it, and land the agency has determined still has wilderness character. The review covers about 200 million acres nationwide and 2.3 million in Montana, including most of Glacier National Park, the Bear Trap Canyon Unit of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, and much of the Breaks.

Interior says these standards need to be reviewed to remove "unnecessary barriers to access." Let me say this plainly: There is no access problem. Nothing in the current policies keeps a canoe off the water, a hunter out of the Breaks, or a family off a campsite. Providing outstanding opportunities for primitive recreation is written into the legal definition of wilderness. Businesses operate here, mine included.

So why the review?

The interests that gain from loosening wilderness standards are oil and gas leaseholders, mining companies, and data center developers, outfits that want a foothold in places supposed to belong to all of us. Changing these policies would give them the go-ahead to squeeze private profit from our public lands.

Most of these protections live in agency policy, not law, which means they can be undone without a vote and rewritten without a single hearing. Interior also went out of its way to split the review into several pieces, which makes the full scope harder to understand. Put it together, and it’s not a good-faith review: it’s a green light for extraction, commercial development, and using public land to generate private profits.

It's familiar by now. Rescinding the BLM Public Lands Rule. Repealing the Roadless Rule. Expanding oil, gas, and mining across public land. Overruling the people whose job is to know this country. Confirming a BLM director who wants to privatize it. The sequence never changes: dismantle the protection first, by whatever means are handy, then open the door to industrial development. Access is just this month's excuse.

Just look at Utah to see where this goes. The president just slashed Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by 90% each. On Sept. 11, new mining claims and mineral leasing can proceed.

Recreation is one of Montana's leading economic drivers. Try telling my shuttle drivers and guides, who know every mile of road and river between Carter and James Kipp, that their jobs aren’t worth it. Tell the Fort Benton motels, cafes and gas stations that make their years between May and October that you’re willing to sacrifice them for short-term corporate gains. Guiding and outfitting added $162.5 million to Montana's economy in 2024, up 12% in a single year. Dismantling that industry won’t benefit anyone except those who want to squeeze every cent from our wide-open public spaces.

Once these places are gone, no amount of money can bring them back. I think about my son growing up on this river, and I think about every kid who deserves the opportunity to learn from this land, whether they're from Fort Benton or a thousand miles away. We can’t hand that down if it's gone.

The Upper Missouri still looks about the way it’s looked for thousands of years. If the administration gets its way, it might not look that way for much longer. We owe it to the next generation to fight for it now, while we still can.