Ron Marlenee

This year, Montana chooses a future. The turbulent winds of wide-open Western politics will prevail either to the left or to the right just as sure and strong as the spring Chinooks blow warm out the Rockies. Here in the Beaverhead Valley, the streets are empty, and it's high noon at a local meeting hall. The audience is sprinkled with cowboys--real cowboys--small-town merchants, mothers, children, a hunting guide, a few local politicians and some retirees.

This year, Montana chooses a future. The turbulent winds of wide-open Western politics will prevail either to the left or to the right just as sure and strong as the spring Chinooks blow warm out the Rockies. Here in the Beaverhead Valley, the streets are empty, and it's high noon at a local meeting hall. The audience is sprinkled with cowboys--real cowboys--small-town merchants, mothers, children, a hunting guide, a few local politicians and some retirees.

The House on Tuesday approved the addition of 1.35 million acres to Montana's existing 3.4 million acres of wilderness areas. Rep. Ron Marlenee (R-Mont.) argued that the state already has enough wilderness area--enough to run a mile wide from Washington to Tokyo. The additional area, he said, was enough to extend that one-mile-wide strip from Tokyo to Moscow. The legislation was sent on to the Senate.

Cy Jamison, a House subcommittee aide and former assistant to James G. Watt, was nominated Wednesday to head the Bureau of Land Management, which manages 300 million acres of federal lands in the West and Alaska. Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr.

President Bush's nomination of Delos Cy Jamison, an aide to former Interior Secretary James G. Watt and an adviser to a ferociously anti-environmental member of Congress, as new chief of the Bureau of Land Management has dismayed environmentalists. They fear that Jamison, if approved by the Senate, will follow the line pursued the last eight years by current Director Robert F. Burford, a Colorado cattleman who is accused of starving the bureau's major environmental programs. Ranchers, meanwhile, praised the selection of the 39-year-old Montana native as a sign that the Bush Administration will advance Reagan-era policies that opened public lands to widespread private development.

Manassas Battlefield Park By a vote of 307 to 98, the House passed and sent to the Senate a bill (HR 4526) authorizing the federal government to acquire 542 privately owned acres next to Manassas National Battlefield Park at an unspecified cost. The Civil War's Second Battle of Manassas in 1862 occurred on and near the northern Virginia site, which will be developed as a shopping mall if not federally protected. Supporter Robert J. Mrazek (D-N.Y.

The James Watt legacy lives on in spite of George Bush's campaign promise to put the very best people to work on his environmental agenda. Bush has made one outstanding appointment in William K. Reilly as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency. But his selections for other critical natural-resource jobs raise serious questions about the Administration's pledge to safeguard the nation's parks, wilderness and coastline. Two former aides to one-time Interior Secretary Watt have been chosen to positions overseeing 70% of the public lands.