He wants Montanans to roll up their sleeves and come up with site-specific suggestions for how those lands should be managed in the future. And he wants county commissions around the state to lend a hand in gathering that information.
On Wednesday, he offered Missoula County commissioners a chance to step into the fray and help gather input from locals interested in offering specific proposals for management of those undeveloped national forest lands.
He did a series of helicopter flights over Milltown Reservoir and Dam, showing reporters and talking with locals about the upcoming Superfund cleanup and dam removal.
State Department of Environmental Quality officials were on hand as well, giving Schweitzer and others an update on the cleanup - which will remove millions of cubic yards of mine and smelter tailings washed down the Clark Fork River and deposited behind the dam.
"We need to clean up the messes of the past," the governor said. The Milltown cleanup, he said, will yield substantial benefits for the environment and the economy.
Schweitzer cast a wider net at Caras Park during Wednesday's Out to Lunch festivities, visiting informally with hundreds of locals and tourists on hand to eat and enjoy.
Then came his sit-down with the Missoula County commissioners, where Schweitzer said he is visiting a number of county commissions in communities affected by the roadless issue.
A recently released Bush administration plan gives governors 18 months to submit ideas to the U.S. Forest Service on how roadless lands should be managed and whether they should remain in a wild, roadless state.
The Bush plan was unveiled in May. It overturned a Clinton-era ban on logging and other development in roadless areas.
Schweitzer plans to host a general meeting for commissioners from throughout the state in October to hear their proposals.
When it comes time for that to happen, Schweitzer was very clear that he wanted the comments to be "sparse on philosophy and theology and strong in science and geology. I want these to be as site specific as possible."
It's time to get past the polarization that has occurred over management of roadless lands over the last 20 years, said Schweitzer.
"We need to recognize that these lands are for multiple use," he said.
Those uses run the gamut from being the headwaters of vital waterways, harboring habitat important to a huge variety of fauna and flora to sustained timber management and being the stomping grounds for both hunters and fishermen.
"We're looking for balance," he said.
Schweitzer told commission and others packed into the meeting room that this is just the beginning of the process. When the information is compiled and gathered, he'll present it to the Forest Service.
That fact worries some.
Jake Kreilick of the National Forest Protection Alliance said the Forest Service, under the Bush administration, is not responding to the groundswell of support of protecting roadless lands in many areas around the country.
"There have been massive amounts of public input," Kreilick said. "We think there is a bit of a tug of war - the Forest Service is the ultimate arbitrator and the Bush administration is in charge of the Forest Service. We hope that you'll factor that in as we participate."
Susan Reneau of Missoula told Schweitzer that the final decision should be made by the people who "know the land day after day" - Forest Service professionals.
"When it is all said and done, the final use of the public forestlands should rest in the hands of the scientists and researchers and not in the hands of the commercial developers or local politicians," Reneau said.
Earlier this year, Schweitzer asked Bush in a letter for some additional staff to help Montana meet this new mandate.
He said the Forest Service employs 2,375 people in Montana and has a budget of $47 million. The governor's office has one natural resource adviser.
"In short, shifting the responsibility for management of the nation's roadless areas to the states is simply passing the buck," Schweitzer's letter said. "Worse, it will undoubtedly have the additional effect of entangling the states in a quagmire of court battles."
Still, Schweitzer said he was committed to gathering input from the communities affected by this plan.
The Bush plan recently dodged an attempt by several environmental groups to restore the Clinton-era ban on logging and other development in 58.5 million acres of roadless areas.
A federal judge in Wyoming struck down the Clinton ban in 2003, ruling the executive branch had overstepped its authority by effectively creating wilderness areas on the U.S. Forest Service land after the state of Wyoming filed a lawsuit.
Several environmental groups appealed. In May, the day after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments, the Forest Service issued a new rule to replace the one that had been overturned.
The three-judge panel ruled the appeal moot on July 11 saying it had become irrelevant because of the new rule.
The new rule gives states until late 2006 to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture to either stop or allow road building.
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