Letter to the Editor:

Editor:

Montana's Hi-Line is generally associated with grasslands, endless fields of wheat, large herds of cattle, and remoteness. It is all that, but it is also a place where a wilderness experience can be found.

For those willing to get off the highway and explore the back roads, you'll find rugged prairie, breaks, badlands and island ranges that offer a natural setting where opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation are as great or greater than the mountains to the west. Most people have heard of the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, but there are many areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management that are equally as valuable, though much less well known - like Frenchman Creek or Black Elk Coulee.

As part of the management planning process for the Hi-Line, the BLM identified 26 areas covering 386,000 acres that have retained their wilderness characteristics. That may seem like a lot, but spread across a landscape covering roughly 16 million acres, it is tiny. Smaller still is the acreage the BLM is proposing to manage explicitly to protect wilderness characteristics - less than 11,000 acres.

It's important to recognize that grasslands are becoming increasingly scarce, and worldwide, the most threatened land type. We owe it to future generations to protect the best of the last of Montana's prairie wildlands. 

Jim Brenna

Havre