Growing up in Montana, we always heard about national forests as
places of “multiple use.” When I was a kid in the 1950s and
1960s, that meant everything from hiking and backpacking to
hunting, grazing, selective logging, fishing and catching
glimpses of wild animals. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s,
however, we saw more and more of our national forests converted
into single uses, including roads, clear-cuts, tree plantations,
off-road vehicles, open pit mines, and dumps of mine tailings.
We who grew up here have firsthand knowledge that roadless
wildlands are fast disappearing. in Montana, for example, there
were 8,600 miles of roads in the national forests in 1945. By
1997, that had increased to 32,900 miles. The Forest Service has
admitted that it’s overwhelmed by its roads, which nationwide
amount to more than 380,000 miles. That’s eight times larger
than the entire Interstate highways system. That is why I am a
strong supporter of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection
Act (NREPA), which will protect 24