It’s a short bill, as far as bills go.

   In two pages, the 95th Congress designated 873,000 acres of national forest in Montana as “wilderness study areas” – places that the U.S. Department of Agriculture would study to see if they were fit for wilderness.

   Within seven years of when the bill passed in 1977, the act said, USDA should share its findings with Congress, which, presumably, would either make that acreage wilderness or not.

   But while the bill excelled in brevity, it lacked hard deadlines and specifics. Today, 33 years after the act passed, Congress has yet to decide on the hundreds of thousands of acres across the state, including 151,000 acres in the Gallatin Mountains that stretches from Hyalite Peak to Yellowstone National Park.

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