Rob Quist was recently endorsed by Montana Conservation Voters in his campaign to replace Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in Montana’s lone House seat, and he expands on his views on natural resources in an interview with the Helena Independent Record. Quist hasn’t hunted or fished in recent years, but says he frequently canoes and camps, and describes access to public lands as “the No. 1 issue for me … probably why I’m in this race.”
To improve access, Quist supports funding and authorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The fund taps royalties on offshore oil as grants for community projects and conservation, including land acquisition.
“We need to push the narrative about what an economic driver (public lands) is for the state of Montana,” he said, with recreation jobs and an influx of tourists each year.
The Trump administration proposes slashing the budgets of several public land management agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency. Quist says he opposes those cuts.
“These are vital programs for the state of Montana and I would definitely push back on those,” he said.
Quist also opposes Trump’s recent executive order calling for review of national monuments established over the past two decades, while he supports Sen. Jon Tester’s bill banning mining near Yellowstone National Park. He’s a bit more wobbly on some issues, saying he wants to hear more about so-called clean coal, but he also points out that “the coal market will be drying up” and “Montana needs to be proactive and get out in front of it.”
And on the subject of climate change, Quist is clear:
“Hiking through Glacier when I was 13 years old and I saw all those glaciers, and now you walk in those same places and they’re a third of the size they were when I was a kid,” he said. “So that’s definite evidence for me that we are dealing with climate change.
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