BCSP Launches New Video Series

HELENA – The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project (BCSP) announced a monthly video series to showcase the conservation, recreation and forest restoration plan the community has spent a decade vetting. The goal of the increased communication efforts is to influence the Montana delegation to move forward with a plan to see the citizen proposal completed through federal legislation.

The first video in the series can be viewed at http://www.blackfootclearwater.org.

“Enough is enough. Some of us are nearing the end of the trail and we can’t wait another decade to get this one through Congress,” said outfitter Smoke Elser. “It’s time to pull out every trick in our book to get our Montana delegation moving on this bottom-up, common sense proposal.”

The BCSP is a diverse group of neighbors in Seeley Lake and Ovando who represent the interests of timber, small local businesses, conservation, ranching, outfitting and snowmobiling who – together - have developed a plan for protecting and using the landscape they share in the Blackfoot and Clearwater Valleys. BCSP is urging Montana’s congressional delegation to embrace the plan and take it to Washington, D.C. this year.

Partners say they are doubling down on the new video series until Montana’s congressional delegation takes more affirmative action with their citizen proposal. They have vowed to produce and distribute one new video per month until Montana’s Congressional delegation signals that they’re ready to take up the legislative aspects of the BCSP proposal and steer those aspects through Congress.

The series will feature interviews with the Montanans who have forged the BCSP, looks at the ten-year history of the project and examines why it has become vital to the Seeley Lake and Ovando communities and to all Montanans.

The first such video features Mack and Connie Long, owners of Bob Marshall Wilderness Outfitters. Access to wilderness areas is vital to their business and their customers impact the local economy greatly with dollars spent on hotel rooms, restaurants, gas stations and more. Most important for the Longs are what these public lands give to their clients and themselves.

“Wilderness is my church,” says outfitter and BCSP member Connie Long. “It has changed my life. We see the magic it has every single time we take clients in on horseback. We must do our job as good stewards of these special places to ensure my grandchildren and their grandchildren, will have those same experiences.”

The BCSP’s forest restoration components have already helped inject tens of millions of dollars into the area and now timber interests would like to see the conservation and recreation parts of the proposals completed through an act of Congress.

“Pyramid has been supportive of the BCSP for more than a decade,” says Loren Rose, Chief Operating Officer for Pyramid Lumber. “Diverse interests came to the table and put aside what we couldn’t agree upon and focused on what we could. Out of that came the BCSP and now is the time to finish what we started.”

The BCSP has received a thorough vetting by numerous groups and has been endorsed by all three regional county commissions of Powell, Lewis and Clark and Missoula, Montana Outfitters and Guides Association, Montana Wildlife Federation, Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Montana Wilderness Association and many more.

“I’ve been taking folks into the backcountry for 50 years and I’ve been working on the BCSP for over a decade,” says Elser. “We have incredible local and regional support. The proposal is cooked and ready – ready for our Montana delegation to take a bite and do their job to finish what we began. So much of life is timing, and the time for the BCSP is now.”

The group will unveil their next video June 6.