Preferred proposal:

Cut in timberlands,new wilderness area

Flathead National Forest officials' preferred long-term management plan substantially reduces forest lands considered "suitable" for timber harvesting, and it includes a new recommended wilderness at the north end of the Whitefish mountain range.

Although timber harvest technically can occur on as much as 866,616 acres, lands identified as suitable for timber harvest equal 328,744 acres - about half the current suitable-timber base of 670,000 acres.

The Forest Service recently unveiled proposed management areas through a color-coded map that splits the forest into areas that would be set aside for different types of management, including established wilderness and "high-use developed areas."

Other aspects of the plan, such as provisions for access, will be proposed gradually during the next few months, during which Flathead forest officials will lead field tours, meetings and other opportunities for public input.

A draft plan will be released during the fall, offering a complete package for public review, said Rob Carlin, the forest's lead planner.

The proposal has raised concerns and criticisms.

Fred Hodgeboom, president of Montanans for Multiple Use, questioned whether the Forest Service's proposed management areas reflected public sentiments.

"They cut the timber base in half," he said. "And there's no explanation as to how they made those allocations. I cannot see that (initial public input for the planning process) came out anywhere in this proposal."

The Flathead, Lolo and Bitterroot national forests jointly launched the development of new forest plans nearly two years ago under 1982 forest-planning regulations. Forest officials are developing plans under new regulations that were approved in January. The planning team coordinating the effort has received 2,800 comments about the plans.

Hodgeboom said that proposed management areas don't reflect how the Forest Service intends to handle one of the biggest issues for the Flathead forest - motorized access.

"That's a big question that these management areas shed no light on," he said. "This proposal is totally silent on addressing the access issue."

The current Flathead plan requires a substantial reduction in road densities, with the goal of improving grizzly bear habitat security. But the new planning regulations are designed to produce long-term management plans that are strategic, with less emphasis on site-specific standards.

Whether the current road-density standards would be part of the new plan is a "critical question that we haven't fully answered yet," Carlin said.

Discussions about those matters are occurring at the agency's highest levels. They include discussions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that oversees Forest Service management of endangered or threatened species, such as grizzly bears.

Under the Endangered Species Act, an obligation to comply with the South Fork grizzly bear study - which led to the forest's current road-density standards- still would exist, Carlin said.

"We have found that the South Fork study is still the best available science, and we are just moving forward with that science and figuring out how to pack it into the new plan," he said.

Another issue is the current plan's latest amendment, which is intended to guide snowmobile access in the forest. Amendment 24 largely was based on a settlement reached among the Forest Service, the Montana Snowmobile Association and the Montana Wilderness Association.

That settlement set boundaries and other specific conditions for snowmobiling that might conflict with a "strategic" forest plan.

"Under the new planning regulations, we have to address whether Amendment 24 goes beyond this type of forest plan … because it's too site specific," Carlin said.

John Gatchell, conservation director for the Montana Wilderness Association, is concerned that the new plan will lack a "clarity of direction" for the Forest Service.

He was pleased that the proposed management areas include "recommended wilderness" for a 64,000-acre swath of forest north of Red Meadow, extending to the Canadian border. For years, the Montana Wilderness Association has pushed for wilderness designation in that general area.

In total, forest officials are proposing 138,000 acres for recommended wilderness, including areas along the east face of the Swan Mountain Range south of Swan Lake, along the Spotted Bear River and in the Middle Fork Flathead River corridor that would be additions to the 1-million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

Gatchell says the association will be looking for adjustments to the boundaries for the proposed areas.

Hodgeboom, meanwhile, says Montanans For Multiple Use members do not see the need for more wilderness areas in the Flathead forest. Hodgeboom also questions the legality of management strategies that come with recommended wilderness. The areas basically would be managed as wilderness areas, he said, well before Congress gives them the formal designations.