09/04/2026
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Flashback: Hunters & anglers hike 7 miles for Montana backcountry, March 5, 2006.
The proposed rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule jeopardizes nearly 45 million acres of undeveloped backcountry forestland managed by the USDA Forest Service comprising around a third of the territory in our national forest system. These forests have only remained intact because of the Forest Service’s nearly 25-year-old commitment not to build roads in these areas for clearcutting and oil-and-gas drilling.
Montana hunters and anglers have stood up for roadless lands, wildlife, wild waters and the Rocky Mountain Front for generations. It’s our turn in 2026. Go to this link https://www.roadlessrulemt.org/ to submit a comment and honor the legacy of leading Montana hunters and anglers mentioned in this MWF press release from March 2006.
"On March 4, a cloudy and sometimes sleety Saturday, more than 50 hunters and anglers walked nearly seven miles from the Black Mountain Roadless Area outside of Helena to the Capitol building where they met with Governor Brian Schweitzer.
The plan, originally hatched by Jim Posewitz of Orion-The Hunters Institute was to hand deliver written recommendations to the Governor detailing why Inventoried Roadless Areas on National Forest lands need to remain in their current condition. The Capitol-March illustrated that hunters and anglers are not only concerned about the fate of Roadless Areas but care enough to walk seven miles to say so.
“We marched today to express our concern for these last roadless wild lands. Doing so is our ethical responsibility as hunters,” said Posewitz during his remarks at the event.
Kathy Hadley, an avid angler, told the Governor and the crowd assembled that her new grandson deserves a Montana wholly different from states where lands free of roads were lost a generation ago.
Chris Marchion, President of MWF told the Governor, “Secure roadless habitat is the core of Montana’s world-renowned wildlife legacy. Maintaining the current condition of Roadless Areas is crucial to maintaining our five-week general deer and elk season – the longest general season of all the western states.”
Marchion handed the Governor a written recommendation drafted by the Hunters and Anglers Roadless Working group and signed by 25 hunting and angling groups from across Montana representing thousands of “real” Montana hunters and anglers.
The event culminated with the Governor telling the group, “I see a group of people who are committed to the ideas of Theodore Roosevelt.” He continued, “Theodore Roosevelt stood up and said ‘I can’t accept it.’” The Governor was referring to the wholesale degradation of wildlife and their habitat during Roosevelt’s lifetime.
The Governor went on to say that the conservation of Roadless Areas is not a partisan issue, “conservation is an American value,” he said to the hunter orange wearing crowd. “The days of polarizing wild places are gone. We are the treasure state and there’s no greater treasure than our wild lands.”
