The Bitterroot Fires of 2000 were still smoldering when the Montana State DNRC Foresters were out on the Sula State Forest sections developing what wound up being an extremely successful timber salvage and site rehabilitation program. Now, to accomplish similar results on the Roaring Lion Fire Area, the Bitterroot National Forest and the State need to take advantage of the passage of the Federal Farm Bill – since Montana signed up for the “Good Neighbor” authority it authorized – it’s time for the US Forest Service to delegate to Montana the authority and responsibility to both salvage fire-killed timber, stabilize and protect the site from overland mud flows, and re-establish seedlings in the appropriate areas of the Roaring Lion Fire. This authority that I suggest is similar to that granted the State on the fuel reduction project on the Helena NF for the Chessman Reservoir Project. It is absolutely essential that mechanical ground-based harvest systems are utilized to break up the fire’s worse after-effect: an impermeable ash-cap on the ground that prevents desirable vegetative and tree seeds from accessing mineral soil, and naturally regenerating the site. Without such an effort, various noxious and other weeds will successfully invade the area and become established, causing grief not only for the Forest but for the entire valley.
Using the‚”Good Neighbor” Authority, the US Forest Service BAER Team ( Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation) should establish and underwrite a Stewardship project authority to Montana to accomplish the necessary steps for hillside stabilization protecting our state’s water resources, reduction of risk for secondary future burns through removal of salvageable timber, and reestablishment of desired vegetation. Tactical access for this effort can be accomplished by temporary bridging of Camas Creek and roading.
I call on Senators Tester, Daines and Congressman Zinke as well as both Governor Bullock and gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte to utilize their “Bully Pulpit” of this campaign season to support, promote and accomplish this.
Senator Pat Connell, Certified Forester
SD43, Southern Bitterroot Valley
Gary McMath says
Dear Pat Connell our Republican State Senator for Hamilton, Montana, in the southern Bitterroot Valley.
As a certified forester you should know well that ash-cap is dispersed by rain, snow, bugs and microbes and not by loggers per-se. It is somewhat though disturbed by the aggressive tracks of extractive machinery, the 4-wheel drive pickups of foresters, and a logging truck that will turn it to dust (and mud).
You must also know that noxious weeds are actually proliferated by logging activity and not fire. Travel any area in Montana where timber is cut and follow the groves of thistle and spotted knapweed in the road ditches and fields to the sawmills.
Then, calling on Senators Tester, Daines and Congressman Zinke, Governor Bullock and gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte to promote logging is a waste of your time or any further discussion. All five of these highly influenced politicians are nearly wetting their pants to get on timber industry’s band-wagon to promote the harvest of these trees.
Senator Jon Tester’s manipulation with the Federal Farm Bill and then Daines and Congressman Zinke so called “Good Neighbor” authority was an outrageous ploy to ‘simply harvest timber’. More logging haul roads and intrusion into Public forested lands to create jobs for the timber industry. The benefit to the forests has been marginal overall nearly anywhere. The bug damage was a massive event.
The fuel reduction project on the Helena National Forest for the Chessman Reservoir Project was pushed along by the political aspirations of Helena’s mayor and commissioners, the State of Montana DNRC, and USFS as a plum for the timber industries. Ostensibly this timber harvest was to protect a city water reservoir and channel that has gotten along fine on it’s own for over 100 years. A minimal thinning was all that should have been done, now taxpayers will have to perpetually apply herbicides around the drinking water to kill the resulting weeds. Any wildfire smoke or ash fall would not have harmed the water for drinking.
All a ploy in order to harvest trees and to legitimize politicians and a plethora of government agencies that create studies and management oversight to maintain their own jobs. Any actual forest environs conservation result, or concern with ash-cap, health or welfare of wildlife and noxious weed control was mindfully kept secondary to the fact that more logging jobs means the agencies in control get to keep theirs. To them it is like a political pastry and everyone of those mentioned above, wants their share of the pie. Politicians or many agencies of government do not see a living forested home full of innocent wild creatures that have no way to escape the planned intrusion. Nor do they really care about board-feet of milled logs, it is simply the certainty of a favorable vote in the next election or the desk job that they wish to protect.