Emily Marburger: First the Boundary Waters, then Montana

You can tell a lot about someone by what they’re willing to sell. Montana’s congressional delegation just made their answer loud and clear.

By backing the sale of public lands in the Boundary Waters, they’re treating something priceless like it’s expendable. Zinke led the charge, then Daines and Sheehy delivered the final votes for passage.

For Montanans, that should set off alarm bells. We know how this works. Once land leaves public hands, it doesn’t come back. It gets locked up, posted off, and turned into something only the richest few get to enjoy.

At the same time, Daines, Sheehy, and Downing are pushing legislation to strip protections from wilderness study areas here in Montana — places that have been managed for decades to preserve their character while Congress decides their future. Remove those safeguards, and you open the door to development, fragmentation, and permanent damage before the public ever gets a real say.

It’s a quiet way of shrinking public lands without technically “selling” them, but the Middle Fork Judith, Hoodoo Mountain and Wales Creek areas sure won’t be the places you remember once the investors are done with them.

Spare us the talking points about responsibility or efficiency. There’s nothing responsible about unloading public land or hollowing out the protections that keep it intact. It’s a one-way deal, and regular people are the ones who lose access in the end.

The hypocrisy can’t be missed. These are the same politicians who wrap themselves in the language of Montana’s outdoor way of life: they pose in camo, talk about hunting season, and promise to protect access. Then they turn around and support policies that chip away at the very idea of public land.

You don’t get to have it both ways.

Some will say, “It’s just the Boundary Waters.” Or that WSA protections are just bureaucratic red tape. That misses the point entirely.

If it can happen there, it can happen here — and under this leadership, it will. The precedent matters. Montana’s public lands aren’t guaranteed. They’re protected because we have always been willing to stand up and say no when someone tries to carve them up.

Public land isn’t excess inventory. It’s where families teach their kids to fish, where hunters pass down traditions, where anyone — no matter their bank account — can find some peace in the outdoors. Selling it off or weakening its protections is a fundamental shift in what these lands are for and who they belong to.

Montanans have a long, unforgiving memory when it comes to public land access. We’ve fought too hard for it to watch it get chipped away, one decision at a time.

It’s time to elect Democrats who take protecting public land seriously.