Appeals target salvage logging

The Flathead National Forest's biggest battles of the last decade have erupted once again in the form of conflicting appeals aimed at the recently approved Robert-Wedge Post Fire Project.

Forest officials find themselves defending the timber salvage and forest restoration project on multiple, familiar fronts.

Three appeals filed by Monday's deadline charge that the Forest Service is pursuing too much logging and not enough forest restoration and wildlife protection.

Two of those appeals contend the Flathead Forest is not obliterating or closing enough forest roads to meet Flathead Forest Plan road density standards that are aimed at improving grizzly bear habitat security.

A fourth appeal, filed by Montanans for Multiple Use, contends just the opposite - the forest is not logging enough and it is closing or obliterating roads in violation of forest plan standards and federal laws.

"We're trying to balance a lot of different things here, including improving grizzly bear habitat and trying to maintain some motorized access," said Joe Krueger, the Flathead Forest's environmental coordinator.

Finding a balance has been a theme for the Flathead's leadership over the last year, as management teams devised plans for several areas burned by wildfires in summer 2003. So far, the post-fire plans have attracted appeals rather than praise, and eventually they could be challenged in court.

The plan approved for areas burned by the Robert and Wedge Canyon fires, which scorched 34,650 acres of national forest lands in the North Fork Flathead basin, calls for salvaging burned timber from 3,022 acres. The salvage is expected to yield 23.3 million board feet of timber - enough to load about 4,600 log trucks.

It also entails seasonal or year-round closures on five miles of currently open forest road and obliterating or "decommissioning" 15 miles of road.

An appeal filed by the Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan charges that the forest is pursuing "overzealous timber salvage while purposely not meeting forest plan standards for restoring wildlife habitat."

Specifically, the appeal points to the project's failure to meet exact road density standards prescribed in the Flathead Forest Plan.

But forest officials say the plan makes reasonable deviations from those standards. And they are betting that those deviations will hold up in court.

They contend that reducing road densities to precisely meet the standards would close access to some private lands in the Whale Creek area. It would require the public to hike five miles to reach the trailhead to Hornet Lookout, a popular fixture in the forest's cabin rental program. It would eliminate motorized access to Ninko Cabin, at least two campgrounds and several trailheads.

Flathead Forest Planner Rob Carlin said the deviations are grounded in the language of the forest plan amendment that established the road density standards in 1995.

A provision in Amendment 19 says "site specific application (of the standards) may reveal unanticipated or impractical results" in some areas, and those conditions may require the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to be "able to adapt to new information."

Carlin says the proposed measures go a long way toward improving grizzly bear habitat security, and that improvement was recognized by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"I think the Fish and Wildlife Service recognized the degree of improvement we're making," Carlin said.

The forest deviated from the road density standards in managing lands burned by the 2001 Moose Fire - and that approach is now being challenged by a lawsuit filed by the Swan View Coalition in U.S. District Court in Missoula.

Separately, Montanans for Multiple Use is pursuing a federal lawsuit that challenges the legality of the Flathead Forest Plan.

Many of the lawsuit's themes are repeated in the appeal filed by Montanans for Multiple Use over the Robert-Wedge project.

"All the roads to be decommissioned … are within management areas designated by the forest plan to be roaded for cost effective protection, long-term sustained yield of timber, recreation and wildlife forage," the appeal states. "A decision to permanently decommission existing roads in these management areas at public expense is in fact a decision to revise the forest plan management direction for those areas."

The appeal contends that the Forest Service has "deceived" the public by failing to analyze and disclose the long-term economic, ecological and administrative effects of gating roads or permanently obliterating them.

Amendment 19, the group argues, amounts to a complete revision of the Flathead Forest Plan "without disclosing the effects and costs to the public."

Montanans for Multiple Use also challenges the validity of public participation in developing the post-fire project. The group contends that a series of "collaborative" meetings held in Kalispell last winter were "manipulated" in a manner that allowed one person to veto the consensus of most people participating in the group.

The result was an "anti-timber harvest bias" that resulted in just 10 percent of the burned areas being targeted for timber harvest.

Forest officials defend that percentage, saying that logging was avoided in roadless areas and it was precluded from areas at high elevation, areas that burned at high intensity or areas with fragile soils.

Some areas had been previously logged or no longer had trees with marketable value.

Another appeal filed by Kalispell resident Stephen Braun challenges the project largely because it "subverted" the intent of special legislation from Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., that was intended to expedite and encourage collaborative development of the project.

The Flathead and Kootenai National Forest Rehabilitation Act was "manipulated by the Flathead National Forest to focus on salvage above all other concerns," Braun's appeal says.

That point was echoed in the Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan appeal, and in the other appeal filed by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, the Ecology Center and the National Forest Protection Alliance.

"This project is long on salvage and extremely short on restoration," said Arlene Montgomery, program director of Friends of the Wild Swan. "The Forest Service twisted the Rehabilitation Act so that salvage logging will be done but the restoration work required by the Forest Plan won't."

The joint appeal from the three environmental groups says the forest is pursuing salvage logging that will result in the harvest of trees that will survive the effects of the fire. It contends that the forest is using "inaccurate" tree mortality guidelines and cites multiple studies with recommended guidelines.

Flathead Forest officials dispute that claim, saying their methods for assessing tree mortality are conservative and were tested in the aftermath of the 2001 Moose Fire.

Two out of four salvage sales in the Robert-Wedge burned areas have already been awarded to contractors under an emergency exemption that allows logging to proceed during the appeal period.

But recent spring-like weather has hindered progress on many logging projects in Northwest Montana. Terms of the post-fire sales require that much of the salvage work be carried out on snow and frozen ground or with helicopters removing logs from the forest.

Combined, those factors could delay the removal of burned timber in the North Fork until next winter. Potential litigation could delay salvage logging even longer.

The appeal will be considered by the regional Forest Service office in Missoula.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com