View and comment on the Outfitter and Guide Project Revised Draft Environmental Assessment (DEA) here.
The deadline is Dec. 18th.

December 11, 2023

Beaverhead -Deerlodge National Forest
Attn: Lisa Timchak, Forest Supervisor
420 Barrett Street

Dillon, MT 59725

RE: Outfitter and Guide Project

Supervisor Timchak,

On behalf of the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, we submit the follow comments in response to the Outfitter and Guide Project Revised Draft Environmental Assessment (DEA).

Our Chapter represents roughly 3,000 dues-paying members across the state. We work to keep public lands and waters public, to defend and improve public access, and to ensure quality fish and wildlife habitat and fair-chase hunting and fishing opportunities can be found when we get there. We value quiet recreation, large landscape conservation, and wild lands and waters. While we appreciate the need to establish a formal service day use pool, we have concerns with the proposed action to increase the current guiding and outfitting use days from 13,175 per year to 33,416 annually – a 153 percent increase.

Montana BHA is not anti-public land and water guiding or outfitting. On the contrary, we feel that, done appropriately, public land and water guiding and outfitting provides a valuable service to public landowners and can create new and strengthen existing public land and water advocates. It can also help ascribe a tangible value to specific tracts of wild, undeveloped lands in ways that the nebulous outdoor recreation economy sometimes fails to achieve.

However, all use - especially commercial use - of our publicly owned lands and waters deserves careful analysis and a clear public process to identify, when, where, and what specifically is being allowed or proposed, so we can better gauge the impacts of this use. This includes impacts to the resource, first and foremost, but also the impacts to other user groups.

That said, we have many concerns with this proposal to increase the current guiding and outfitting use days from 13,175 per year to 33,416 annually – a 153 percent increase, and we firmly object to the proposed action for the following reasons:

1. The proposal to increase outfitter use is broad and lacks specifics.

Failing to mention what specific activities will be permitted/increased, where or when, the proposal makes it impossible to accurately measure the impacts and outcomes of the proposed changes, and therefore impractical to provide adequate public comment. This alone should be enough to scrap this proposal, and seems to be in clear violation of the intent, if not the letter of, NEPA.

In the June 2015 Assessment of Need for Outfitted Services and Resource Capacity Analysis Executive Summary, citing data from The Special Use Database (SUDS), the USFS mentions that “23 different activities were found to be currently operating on the Forest.” Appendix A - Uses and Associated Activities - lists 25 “existing and possible future outfitting and guiding uses.” Yet nowhere in the EA does it specify which of these activities would be receiving increased user days and by how much. Guided bird watching has a much different impact than outfitted snowmobile excursions, as OHV tours have a much different impact than rock climbing classes. We don’t even know which activities being increased in the proposed action are motorized and which are not. We don’t know which activities being increased in the proposed action are prone to spread noxious weeds or aquatic invasives. We don’t know which activities being increased in the proposed action are permitted to build basecamps or temporary structures. We don’t know which activities being increased in the proposed action are day-use and which are overnight. The public must know what the increased activities in the proposed action are, specifically.

Additionally, commercial activities on sensitive areas such as inventoried roadless areas (IRAs), Recommended Wilderness Areas or wilderness study areas (WSAs), alpine environments, or other sensitive habitats of importance have much different impacts than guiding/outfitting in less sensitive areas. Wilderness, WSAs and Recommended Wilderness Areas alone make up 22 percent of the project area. While the EA offers overly broad data on current use and proposed increases across all use days by large geographic areas, the EA fails to decipher in any meaningful way on where specifically the increased use would be permitted.

Additionally, guiding/outfitting on landlocked, inaccessible public lands has entirely different impacts on wildlife and user experience/conflict from guiding/outfitting on accessible public lands. The EA doesn’t differentiate these lands at all. 

Simply put, the public must know where these activities in the 3.39-million-acre project area’s proposed action will take place.

Furthermore, outfitted and guided activities in winter months have a different impact than they do in summer months. The public must know when these increased activities in the proposed action will take place.

It’s important to note that while the proposed action does list design features per potential commercial activity, it still fails to spell out where or what, specifically, increased activities are being proposed. This is a key and missing component of the analysis.

As is, the public is left uncertain of what the full impact of these changes would be and what species could be impacted and how. Again, this seems to be in clear violation of the intent, if not the letter of, NEPA.

2. The rationale provided is wholly insufficient. 

The USFS fails to provide a defensible rationale for this proposal. The existing outfitter use appears to already be over-allocated. In the June 2015 Assessment of Need for Outfitted Services and Resource Capacity Analysis Executive Summary, the USFS, citing data from the SUDS, mentions that “outfitters and guides are utilizing an average of 48% of their permitted days,” with “every activity offered by outfitters and guides show[ing] some unused permitted days.”

So not even half of the permitted days are being utilized, and all forms of outfitting guiding appear to be overallocated use days, yet - reportedly based on anecdotal requests for commercial use and nothing more - the USFS is proposing to increase permitted use days by 153 percent? This seems irresponsible and entirely unnecessary. We encourage the USFS to further consider other alternatives like the one that would increase commercial use by ten percent, not 153 percent.

Additionally, in the June 2015 Assessment of Need for Outfitted Services and Resource Capacity Analysis Executive Summary, the USFS mentions that “eighty percent of outfitters do not feel there is an issue of crowding on the Forest.” However, no other user groups seem to have been polled on this question, and the findings seem to be wholly inconsistent with what we repeatedly hear from Montana’s public land users, specifically hunters and anglers, today. These findings are also nearly a decade old, which fails to consider the recent changes in Montana and the current use we’re witnessing on our public lands and waters.

The only rationale that seems to make sense is that the USFS preferred alternative “would result in greater efficiencies for the administration of the Forest’s outfitting and guiding program” and provide “better customer service.” In other words, it would make the USFS’s job easier, and guides and outfitters would get better customer service. These reasons seem inadequate and fail to justify an undefined and poorly assessed 153 percent increase of commercial use on these public lands.

3. The USFS fails to follow their own Assessment of Need

The June 2015 Assessment of Need Assessment of Need outlines the indicators of need that are used to guide this proposal. The first two (of four) listed are “Current Supply of Outfitters in non-wilderness and wilderness areas of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest” and “Current Demand for Outfitted Services in non-wilderness and wilderness areas of on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.” 

Both indicators seem wise to measure, but the USFS fails to follow their own logic, specifically the ‘current’ part of the supply/need criteria as these data are nearly a decade old, and certainly not ‘current.’

Montana BHA requests the following:

1. ‘Current Supply’ and ‘Current Demand’ for Outfitters Services in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest be re-examined using data no older than 2021.
2. Increased outfitter/guide use days are only considered in areas where all existing and available use days are currently being used, and
3. specific recreational activities are clearly identified and communicated, and 
4. specific locations where these activities would be permitted are clearly identified and communicated, and
5. specific dates where these activities would be permitted are clearly identified and communicated, and
6. specific impacts on wildlife species are identified and communicated, and
7. any proposed expansion of outfitter/guide use days come with a well-publicized 30-day comment period targeting all public land users

We ask that until these requests are addressed, the USFS adopt Alternative 1: No Action.

Montana BHA understands and appreciates the desire to streamline the process of approving commercial use on our public lands. Additionally, we have concerns with the current use of categorical exclusions to authorize these requests without any environmental impacts considered or public involvement, so we understand the desire and need to establish a formal service day use pool. We agree with doing this, just feel that a cap that allows a 3x increase in use days is excessive, especially given the lack of justifications and clarity.

In closing, we strongly believe that the USFS fails to follow their own Assessment of Need, that the proposed action to increase outfitter use is too broad and lacks specifics and therefore makes the impacts inscrutable, and the rationale provided for the proposed action is wholly insufficient and appears anecdotal. We ask that until these issues and our requests are addressed, the USFS adopt Alternative 1: No Action.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment. 

Sincerely, 

John B. Sullivan III, Board Chair

Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers

[email protected]

View and comment on the Outfitter and Guide Project Revised Draft Environmental Assessment (DEA) here.
The deadline is Dec. 18th.