The responsibility of keeping what remains intact

One hundred seventy million years ago a three-mile deep slab of rock broke and slid over bedrock from the Cretaceous period, leaving what we know today as the Rocky Mountain Front. Since then, ice ages and dinosaurs have come and gone. But after the last retreat of continental glaciers, not much has changed on the Front.

And a good thing, too. With around 98 percent of the lower 48 states already brimming with roads, we have a responsibility to keep what remains of our last wild places intact.

That’s a responsibility to the nearly 4,000 head of elk that spill out onto the Sun River Game Preserve every year and the 190 class Boone and Crockett rams that are often glassed high above the canyons each year. But most importantly, it’s a responsibility to the next generation of sportsmen’s and -women’s ability to share the experience that sets hunting and recreating in Montana apart from other places.

I’m a bit late in thanking our senior senator for sponsoring the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act last fall but I hope his bill will get its day in committee soon and the vote it deserves in the U.S. Congress.

Jeff Vanderstouw
Missoula