- [Sam] Coming up on "Impact."

Montana managed to contain its first measles outbreak in decades.

But health officials say we aren't out of the woods yet.

- I would not be surprised at all if we have additional cases of measles that come to Montana.

- [Sam] As we go into a busy summer travel season, health experts say gaps in vaccine coverage could leave some communities at risk.

And for decades, over a million acres of public land in Montana have been left in a management limbo.

We'll dive into the debate surrounding wilderness study areas.

Those stories next on "Impact."

- [Announcer] Production of "Impact" is made possible with support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, and viewers like you who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

- Welcome to "Impact."

I'm Sam Wilson.

In the midst of a national outbreak of the measles, Montana has seen its first cases in 35 years.

The outbreak in Gallatin County included eight people, both children and adults, who had recently traveled and brought the virus back to Montana.

While health officials were able to contain the spread this time, Montana PBS's Anna Rau reports that falling vaccination rates and gaps in knowledge have experts worried about the next outbreak.

- [Anna] Missoula representative and pediatric doctor Melody Cunningham just finished her freshman session as a Montana lawmaker, and she's already working the doors for reelection.

Representative Cunningham has some unfinished business in the State House.

- I knew that it was going to be a struggle.

It was my number one priority bill.

The intent of this bill is to restart the flow of information from schools to DPHHS.

- [Anna] Representative Cunningham is talking about her bill that would've required school districts to share anonymous vaccine data with health officials and the public.

In 2021, the legislature struck that requirement, and now county health departments and the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services are in the dark on vaccine rates in Montana schools.

Montana is the only state in the nation that doesn't report those numbers.

- Let's get the information that the schools, by law, have to collect and get it to DPHHS so that we can know where there are vulnerabilities.

Because people are trying to go about and live their lives, and some are afraid that they or their infants who cannot yet receive a vaccine could be exposed.

- I think that parents just feel helpless of new babies.

They feel like, well, how am I supposed to function and do the daily things?

How am I supposed to, you know, go to the grocery store?

- [Anna] Dr. Atty Moriarty is a Missoula pediatrician and the president of the Montana chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

She says many new parents are alarmed by the recent measles cases in Bozeman.

They want to know what the risk is in their community and how they can protect their baby.

But she says other parents don't seem to be as worried.

- We have been fortunate to have eradicated many of these diseases, and so we're not scared of them anymore in the way that we used to be.

- I think we forget that diseases have consequences when we don't see them very often.

- [Anna] But Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Moriarty say people should be concerned, because for some, the measles is not just a fever and a rash.

- Patients die from measles.

So kids can die from measles, particularly younger patients, pregnant moms.

And then there are other complications of that, premature birth, miscarriage, low birth weight.

It can also cause what's called encephalitis, so fancy name for brain swelling that can cause seizures and other complications.

- [Anna] The numbers are sobering.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, roughly a quarter of unvaccinated children who get the measles will be hospitalized.

One in 10 children will suffer ear infections that can cause permanent hearing loss.

One in 20 unvaccinated children with the measles will develop pneumonia.

One to three children in a thousand will develop encephalitis that can cause brain damage, seizures, and deafness.

And one to two children per 1,000 measles cases will die.

And more recently, Harvard researchers discovered that the measles causes what's known as immune amnesia.

- It can erase the immunity we've seen from other illnesses.

So if kids have seen RSV, if they've seen all of the viruses that cause the common cold, it erases that immunity so then they can get all of those again.

- Data shows that particularly among children, young children under the age of five, that they can have more severe symptoms.

- [Anna] Laura Williamson is a state epidemiologist with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.

She says not only is the measles a serious disease with terrible complications, it's also extremely contagious.

- It's an airborne virus, and it can linger in the air and on surfaces for up to two hours after a person has, say, left the room.

- It's contagious without symptoms, at least four days before the symptoms come on.

It is one of the most contagious viruses we have.

Nine out of 10 people exposed to someone with measles will contract measles if they're un or under-vaccinated.

- Anything less than a 95% vaccination coverage in a specific community opens ourselves up for an outbreak.

- It's important that public health authorities have access to aggregate information so that you can track where vaccinations are not being used.

- [Anna] Explaining the contagiousness and the complications convinced lawmakers in the House that releasing school vaccine data is a good idea, that it would help experts and the public assess the risk in the face of a measles outbreak.

Cunningham's bill passed by a 66 to 31 vote.

But things changed when the bill hit the Senate floor for debate.

- This particular bill is not needed.

- This is meddling.

- This is government intrusion, overreach.

I will not comply.

- Montana has a very high vaccination rate.

Currently, this is 2022, 95% of children were vaccinated for the requirements that we require in schools.

It's very high.

- There was a lot of controversy and things that were said and asked that were incorrect.

So, for example, you know, we have a vaccination rate of 95%.

Well, we don't know that at this point.

Perhaps at some point we did, when we had the information, but we don't know that now.

- [Anna] Representative Cunningham suspects the vaccination rates are probably lower, especially in some Montana communities.

She points to recent changes in Montana law that have made it easier for parents to get medical exemptions for their children.

- It is not simply physicians.

It's a much broader group who are able to give vaccine exemptions.

So any healthcare provider who provides vaccines is able to provide an exemption.

- Among school-aged children, the number of children who are up to date with their vaccines has been declining since the pandemic.

- I have talked to some of the surrounding counties who are concerned that their vaccination rate is not up to that level to acquire herd immunity.

And they're worried.

The healthcare providers there are worried, because if we have an outbreak, we're gonna lose kids.

- [Anna] Brooke Kriniger is the nursing supervisor for Missoula County Public Schools.

She takes little comfort in the fact that the Gallatin County outbreak was contained so quickly.

And she says the risk for unvaccinated Montana children is far from over.

- North Dakota, a community right on the border of Montana, has cases.

Of those cases, not all of them are related.

That means we have community spread happening right on our state's borders.

- [Anna] North Dakota's vaccine rate for kindergartners in the county where the outbreak is occurring is just 81%, well below the 95% herd immunity target.

Kriniger says Montanans deserve to know the vaccine rates and the risks in their communities despite changes in state law.

Is there anything preventing a concerned parent or member of the media calling up and saying, "Hey, what is the vaccination rate?"

- No, not to my knowledge.

There's nothing that prevents us from sharing that information.

- [Anna] So the bill in 2021 said they're not mandated to provide this information.

The school districts aren't.

But does that preclude them from providing it if they want?

- Yeah, no, it does not preclude school districts from proactively providing aggregate information.

- [Anna] So Montana PBS called numerous school districts across the state and asked them to provide their vaccination rates.

Most of the large school districts are above the 95% herd immunity threshold, but Hamilton reported an 89.5% vaccination rate and Great Falls sits at 84%.

The Bozeman and Kalispell public school districts are working to provide their rates under Freedom of Information requests we filed.

At airtime, we did not have those numbers yet.

And the Corvallis School District declined to provide its vaccination rate.

Williamson says she's not surprised some school districts are declining to provide the data.

- We are no longer asking them for it because we suspect that the schools that are in communities that have good vaccine coverage would probably be the ones that report, and maybe some that are in communities where vaccination coverage is low or whatever, we just might get some skewed data.

- [Anna] Great Falls stands out as the biggest community that reported a lower vaccination rate.

Great Falls has an 84% vaccination rate.

- Yikes.

- [Anna] What do you think about that?

- I think it's highly, highly concerning - 84%, I would be really nervous.

- [Anna] Because of the 2021 law, it's not publicly known if there are lower school vaccination rates across the state.

And it may be at least another two years before we have current school vaccination rates.

Representative Cunningham's bill died in the Senate even while Montana was seeing its first measles cases in over three decades.

After her bill failed, Cunningham met with the Gianforte administration to see if they would ask school districts to report vaccine data anyway, but they declined.

Meanwhile, the children who were born under the expanded exemption laws are just beginning to hit preschools and kindergartens.

- Alright, thanks so much.

Great to see you again.

- Great to see you.

- [Anna] So Representative and Pediatrician Cunningham isn't going to stop fighting to make vaccine rates available.

She's planning to take another swing at the issue if she's elected to a second term.

- I think information is freedom.

We all make decisions based on information.

And so I think people have the right to have that information.

- As pediatricians, we don't mean to scare people, but we also want people to, you know, live a happy, healthy life.

We want kids to grow up, and ride bikes, and swim in the creeks, and do all the things that we love to do in Montana.

- [Anna] Dr. Moriarty and Dr. Cunningham know that parents also want that for their children.

That's why they believe families should have the best information to assess risk and make informed decisions in the midst of what's shaping up to be the largest US outbreak of measles in more than 20 years.

For "Impact," I'm Anna Rau.

- If pregnant women were previously vaccinated, then their babies have protection from the measles for the first six months of life.

Also, if an unvaccinated child or adult is exposed, they can receive an emergency dose of the vaccine within 72 hours to lessen the severity of the disease.

Over a million acres of public land in Montana hold a protection status that has brought controversy for nearly half a century.

The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management manages these lands as wilderness study areas.

That means they aren't officially protected as wilderness, but they haven't been released for other uses either, leaving them stuck in a kind of legal limbo.

Montana PBS's Hannah Kearse gives an update on the decades long debate over their future.

- [Hannah] Jeff Johnson's ranch borders the Hidden Pastures Creek wilderness study area south of Dillon.

He's permitted to graze his cattle in this wilderness study area, or WSA, but he can't update the fences to meet today's standard grazing methods.

That's because WSAs are supposed to be managed as they were when they were designated.

- The big thing is there's some management things we'd like to do.

Like I said, the fences, water tanks, spring developments.

And that would help the riparian areas greatly.

- [Hannah] The Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, considered including Hidden Pastures Creek WSA into the National Wilderness Preservation System several decades ago, but the agency determined that the more than 15,000 acres didn't meet wilderness standards due to the numerous roads, including a county road, and power lines that run through parts of it.

- I think the BLM had to go look at the areas to see if they were suitable for wilderness.

But two things.

It isn't suitable for wilderness, and they say that, and the boundaries they drew around it were just basically property boundaries, like, our irrigation ditches go through it.

We irrigate in some of the wilderness study area.

The roads, like the road I showed you between my house and my son's house, goes through it.

They didn't take any of that into consideration.

And it makes a lot of controversy.

- [Hannah] But Hidden Pastures Creek designation as a WSA never changed, so the restrictions on what Johnson can and can't do remain.

And over in the Gravelly mountains south of Virginia City, BLM came to a similar conclusion about the Axolotl Lakes WSA.

With roads and multiple use opportunities, the agency determined it wasn't suitable for wilderness.

But many disagree, in part because the area's namesake comes from the unique Axolotl salamander that inhabits some of these lakes.

But also, ecologists say that these nearly 8,000 acres have significant wilderness qualities, like dark skies and quietness.

And hikers here say these qualities are worth protecting.

- There's a lot of areas in the Madison Valley and particularly going up into the Tobacco Roots where there's a lot of mechanized travel.

And that's fine.

In the right places, that's fine.

But there's a real need to set aside some areas that aren't open to motorized and mechanized travel.

I mean, one of the nice things about our trip was the only people we saw and heard basically were ourselves once we left the trail head, other than the two people we ran into.

So it's really quiet, it's peaceful.

We could hear the ducks when we were at Axolotl Lake.

We could hear the birds.

(bird squawking) - [Hannah] These two WSAs are on BLM land, which is mandated to manage its lands for multiple use and sustained yields unless otherwise specified.

This includes energy development and recreation.

And this played a part in BLM's recommendations to release Hidden Pastures Creek and Axolotls Lakes WSAs from wilderness consideration in the '90s.

But that was the last time BLM evaluated these areas.

- In the forest, every time you do a Forest Plant Revision, you look at whether a wilderness study area should be wilderness or not and make a recommendation.

On the BLM side, they did it once and they haven't looked at it again.

And so, like, what they would look at in the '90s is much different than what we might look at now as far as wilderness character.

That's 35 years, and things have changed.

A lot of areas have gotten more wild or less wild.

But, you know, to not re-look at those 30 years is kind of strange.

- [Hannah] Over the last decade, several pieces of legislation have attempted to demote or promote Montana's WSAs, but not much has changed.

That's because this change has to come from the United States Congress.

And the last major action to address these WSAs came in 1988, but then President Ronald Reagan vetoed Congress's decision.

And since then, Congress has made only one successful move on WSAs in Montana.

That was in 2014, when two WSAs in Southeastern Montana were released.

But aside from that, efforts to resolve the status of these lands have largely stalled.

- There's been a number of other bills that either were introduced and passed committee, but they never made it to the president's desk like the '88 bill.

So the '88 bill is like kind of that place where I feel like we hit a wall.

- [Hannah] In total, 44 WSAs in Montana are waiting for Congress to make a decision.

And Senator Steve Daines has repeatedly asked Congress to release certain WSAs from wilderness consideration.

- We're going back to '76 and '77.

We are way overdue to take action to deem which are suitable for wilderness, which are not, and act on it appropriately.

Release those that are not suitable for wilderness.

And those that are suitable, we should be moving forward for wilderness proposals.

- [Hannah] Senator Daines is preparing to reintroduce his Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act to Congress this year.

In it, he focuses on three WSAs, Hoodoo, Wales Creek, and the Middle Fork Judith River, which in all is about 100,000 acres.

And it supports the Forest Service's and BLM's recommendations to manage at least parts of these areas with administrative protections.

Senator Daines says the bill will promote public access to public lands, improve the ability to restore wildlife habitat, and reduce the risk of wildfire.

The largest of these WSAs is the Middle Fork Judith River, which is about 81,000 acres of Forest Service land in Little Belt Mountains, southeast of Great Falls.

The Forest Service declined an interview but stated that a study done by the Forest Service in 1982 recommended the area be managed as non-wilderness and that this aligned with the conclusions in the 2021 forest plan as well.

But wilderness advocates say that sections of the Middle Fork Judith River WSA have distinct wilderness characteristics.

- But we've worked in that landscape since it was designated wilderness study area.

Our members know that area.

Former staff know that area.

I know that area.

And there are probably Forest Service folks who signed the final decision in 2021 that have never stepped foot very far into the wilderness study area.

And so I think that was a little bit of a mistake.

I think there are areas within there that we should at least consider, that local stakeholders should sit down together and be like, "Okay, this motorized trail is here and this motorized trail is here, but this section is pretty pristine and primitive.

Maybe it is worthy of wilderness designation or some other conservation designation."

- [Hannah] The Forest Service and BLM are tasked with maintaining WSA's wilderness characteristics and historic use.

And in WSAs like the Middle Fork Judith River, this is a difficult balance to strike.

Here, motorized use is permitted and Jeep trails crisscross over the river.

Over time, increased use has caused significant damage in some places.

But recently, a conservation project restored about six miles of river banks and reinforced Jeep trails to help guide users to proper crossings.

If the area had been declared wilderness, the much needed restoration may not have happened.

- So had this been in wilderness, there's just no way we could have gotten heavy equipment in there to do this work.

And those stream banks were in such degradation that we needed heavy equipment to kind of right the ship.

- [Hannah] While wilderness areas can be a barrier for conservation efforts like this, there are other levels of protection that can better balance multiple use, conservation projects, and land management.

- The Travel Management Plan gives this area good protections.

It's also a designated roadless area.

And so, you know, those combined, there's a whole host of of management designations the Forest Service can implement.

But, you know, we think those management decisions should be locally-led, robust public process, and scientifically-driven.

- [Hannah] But some conservationists say administrative protections aren't strong enough.

That's because they can change much easier than Congressional protections, which require an act of Congress.

- If there was a president that was really hostile to those things, those could potentially go away.

They could change the Forest Management Plan.

There's some possibility that we could lose an inventory roadless area designation through administrative action.

And so, you know, for the Middle Fork Judith, I would like to see maybe some of those areas, if the wilderness area is going away and there's not a wilderness designation possible, some sort of other conservation protection, whether that's like legislative mineral withdrawal for the area, so we wouldn't see mining, whether that's the conservation management area.

- [Hannah] Most stakeholders agree that a collaborative local effort is the ideal path forward for each WSA, but legislative efforts to bypass this collaborative approach have persisted.

- The rest of the resolution is simply asking Congress to release these areas from being studied under this wilderness study area, which is designated in 1977, nearly 50 years ago, and returned into public lands managed by decisions of our local Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management districts rather than their current state of being managed as a wilderness study area dictated by Washington DC.

- Joint Resolution 14 was tabled in the Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee after hearing significant opposition.

And some stakeholders see Senator Daines' Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act as another effort to bypass these collaboratives.

- We agree wilderness study areas should be looked at.

We have collaboratives around the state where we're actually doing that work, and, like, these ones aren't in those areas right now.

- [Hannah] These local collaboratives are crucial in resolving disputes over Montana's WSAs.

- As ranchers, we manage our private ground.

We manage the public ground.

We enjoy the wildlife.

We're making a living off of our cattle.

And the wilderness study area, it's just a hard management thing for us.

We're mandated to take care of all of our improvements, but the restrictions that come with a wilderness study area make it really difficult for us, very difficult, and costly too, yeah.

A lot of it ends up being a lot more labor.

In some instances, we're not allowed to maintain what we're supposed to maintain.

Our BLM guys do as good a job as they can to let us get things done, but that's gotta be by the book.

- [Hannah] Whether they determine these lands for wilderness or not, they're attempting to lay the groundwork for the future of these lands.

For "Impact," I'm Hannah Kearse.

- If Congress ever votes to release these lands from their WSA status without including legal protections, future land management actions would still go through the National Environmental Policy Act process, which requires public input and environmental analysis.

That's all for this edition of "Impact."

From all of us here at Montana PBS, thanks for watching.

(rhythmic music) - [Announcer] Production of "Impact" is made possible with support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, and viewers like you who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

(lighthearted music)