Washington Post
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A01
CHOTEAU, Mont. -- The Great Plains smack into the Rockies just west of here. The collision of flatness and verticality results in the Rocky Mountain Front, the only place in the West where large numbers of grizzlies, elk and bighorn sheep still wander down out of the mountains and take their leisure on the grassy plain.
Seven years ago, the U.S. Forest Service ruled that the Front deserved "special attention" and halted new oil and gas leasing. Hunters, hikers and assorted lovers of this 100-mile-long stretch of wildernessbreathed a collective sigh of relief.
A long fight between energy extraction and wildlife protection seemed over. The bears and the elk had apparently won, with the help of national conservation and hunting groups, as well as a majority of Montanans, who told pollsters this place should be left alone.
But now, with natural gas prices up sharply and with President Bush making domestic energy production a national security priority, the fight over the Front is back on. Although the Forest Service's ban on new leases remains in effect, the Bureau of Land Management is reviewing plans by three companies with existing leases to extract gas from eight wells. If they find significant amounts of gas, there will almost certainly be many more new wells, plus roads, pipelines and processing plants.
Rumbles of renewed resource extraction along the Front are echoing across the country -- with prime hunting and fishing habitat coming under threat in the federal forests, plains and wetlands of Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico and elsewhere. The gathering din has begun to worry -- and, in some cases, infuriate -- America's fishermen and hunters, many of whom are Republicans who voted for Bush. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates about 47 million Americans fish or hunt.
"This is a community that is slow to anger, but once they get lit it is a real hot burn," said Chris Woods, conservation director for Trout Unlimited, which has 130,000 members, 64 percent of whom say they are Republicans. "You are seeing this now on the Rocky Mountain Front. This is one of the Holy Grail places."
When it comes to politics, a long-standing lament among American sportsmen is that Democrats want your guns and Republicans want your land.
Leaders of the country's major fishing and hunting organizations agree that concern about gun-control laws was a key factor in their members' support for Bush in the last election. Yet, with the exception of the National Rifle Association, these leaders say they are hearing from members upset about what the Bush administration is doing to federal land.
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