“I think the political community, now that they have us so firmly wedged into conflicting groups, they have another shot at pulling some of this off,” he said. “I think they’re serious and they want to exploit the natural resources we’ve fought so hard to protect.”
The political divide did not always exist, with some of the finest conservation law coming from Montana conservatives, Posewitz said. Montana’s Constitution and the Montana Environmental Policy Act came from conservative lawmakers, and during a Kiwanis meeting, former Democratic Rep. Pat Williams received a standing ovation from mostly Republican business leaders when he proclaimed, "Not on my watch they won’t," to a Reagan-era proposal to survey the Bob Marshall Wilderness for oil.
“When you ask a Montana citizen to describe Montana, we tend to describe ourselves through the outdoor amenities we value,” Posewitz said. “Nobody describes the Berkley Pit, but that’s how historians describe our history.”
Posewitz points to Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act as an example of compromise that the political divide has stalled. When it comes to natural resources, the argument always comes back to jobs, he said, but in the 1930s the most jobs ever created were for conservation stewardship programs.
“The robber barons all vanished and faded,” Posewitz said. “With Teddy Roosevelt, they put him on Mount Rushmore — chiseled his face in granite.”
