Great Burn grievances: Stakeholders clash over wilderness complex management

The Great Burn is referred to as “one of the last best places” by wilderness and wildlife advocates, snowmobilers and mountain bikers. All of them revere the quarter million-acre jumble of peaks along the Montana-Idaho border. 

But wilderness and wildlife advocates  — who have long pushed for bikes and snowmobiles to be banned from the area — now worry that new U.S. Forest Service plans could chip away at what they believe is the would-be crown jewel connecting the largest chain of wilderness in the Lower 48. 

The issue is a tangled bureaucratic web ensnaring two national forests, two states, one Forest Service regional office, a variety of user groups and a history of conflicting management on one shared landscape full of animals who can’t see boundary lines on maps. 

With me today is Joshua Murdock, the outdoors and natural resources reporter at the Missoulian, to help explain the issue.