Jeffrey Brown:

This is public land, just a fraction of the 245 million acres in the United States administered by the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM.

Now, though, a familiar question hangs above this terrain, how best to use and protect it. Land fights in the West over energy production and conservation have gone on forever, of course. But this one, like so much else, is now caught up in today's political divides.

In 2014, under President Obama, the BLM identified some 200,000 acres in Central Montana as having — quote — "wilderness characteristics." But in May, more than two years after President Trump took office, the agency released a draft of its new preferred plan for managing that land, and none was set aside for protection.

Instead, the plan would open more than a million acres to oil and gas exploration. And it calls for eliminating eight existing so-called areas of critical environmental concern. These spaces require special protection for wildlife, history, culture, or scenery.

Conservationists have cried foul, saying guidance from career professionals was ignored.

Aubrey Bertram is a field director for the Montana Wilderness Association. She says the BLM's longstanding mission to allow multiple uses of public land, a range of activities commercial and recreational, is under threat.