by Michael Hoyt, Corvallis
The massive Bitterroot Front logging project is being fast-tracked using emergency funds—taxpayer subsidies—provided by the 2021 Infrastructure Act. I call it a logging project, because, like most Bitterroot National Forest (BNF) projects, that’s what its main purpose is—to get the cut out. Apparently, it’s now an emergency to commercially log 50 square miles and build 37 miles of new roads on the Bitterroot Front, in full view of the valley’s residents.
The Forest Service has been endlessly promoting the fear of wildfire for decades to frighten people into supporting projects like this. They even put a photo of the campfire-caused, wind-driven 2016 Roaring Lion wildfire on the cover of the Bitterroot Front EA, as if this project would have stopped or prevented that fire. A timely, temporary ban on campfires might have, but not this project.
BNF says it will save our houses and communities, even though the fire scientists say the opposite—that working from the home outward for a couple of hundred feet is the only way to save houses. That Denton, Montana, Marshall, Colorado, and Lahaina, Hawaii, each burned without nearby forests should be enough to convince anyone that this is true.
BNF is asking for approval of the project before they even give the public details of what and where activities will occur. “Trust us,” they say. But they don’t want to hear from you.
What we do know about the Bitterroot Front project conflicts with many well-thought-out, substantive public comments, including those from one of BNF’s own collaboratives.
Many people asked that BNF disclose specific activities and locations prior to project approval; BNF is sticking with “condition-based” analysis and not disclosing details.
Many asked for a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS); BNF produced only an Environmental Assessment (EA), meaning they will declare no significant impact from the 50 square miles of commercial logging and 37 miles of new roads.
The public asked that they allow extensive public input; BNF gave them an expedited process that fast-tracks the project and eliminates the objection process.
Many asked the Forest Service to emphasize educating the public on community protection by following the fire scientists’ recommendations of working from the home outward; BNF instead says their logging of wildlands, miles from homes, is the answer to community protection.
The public asked for improvements to roads, trails, and recreation; BNF dropped all recreational improvements.
The public asked them to minimize new road construction; BNF is giving them 10 miles of new permanent roads and 27 miles of temporary roads, which they will not guarantee will be fully reclaimed and recontoured.
Wildlife biologists asked that they protect some wildlife corridors between the Sapphires and Bitterroots; BNF did not even consider it.
People asked the Forest Service to stay out of roadless areas; BNF proposes commercial logging within Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs).
The public asked that they analyze the project’s effects on climate and carbon; BNF did not.
People asked that they use their newly minted old-growth definition only to recruit old growth and not to cut old trees down to the minimum; BNF says only that they will retain minimum numbers, and will cut old large trees where it will “improve resilience to insects, disease, and wildfire”—the same unproven reason they use for all logging.
The public asked for ongoing project monitoring and adaptive management; BNF proposed a fast timeline that will allow for neither.
Then the BNF announced the Soda-Baker project, immediately south of the Bitterroot Front project, that adds another 3 square miles of commercial logging where, BNF says, “generally only scattered trees will remain.” Think clearcut. This project is being done as a Categorical Exclusion, where the public is the main thing excluded from the process, and given a one-time only, 14-day comment period. And there is also the huge Gold-Butterfly project in the Sapphire Mountains and the enormous Mud Creek project along the West Fork of the Bitterroot River.
Bitterroot Valley residents should be afraid, but not of wildfire.
We can learn to live with wildfire by hardening our homes, by creating defensible space around them, by having an evacuation plan, and by knowing where we are going to shelter ourselves, our pets, and our livestock if need be. We should instead be frightened of what Bitterroot National Forest intends to do with our surrounding public lands, the very reason many of us live here.