Task force on roadless areas produces divergent opinions

Majority of members want flexibility in managing Flathead forest

A task force charged with recommending direction for roadless areas in the Flathead National Forest has produced divergent opinions - a majority calling for management flexibility and a minority urging protection for roadless lands.

The task force was formed by the Flathead County Commission in a response to Gov. Brian Schweitzer's call for county-by-county suggestions for roadless management. Schweitzer plans to submit a petition with recommendations for roadless areas to the Forest Service by December, as requested by the Bush administration.

But direction from Flathead County isn't uniform, and it strays from the governor's specific request to "carefully assess … whether or not any new federal roads are needed" in national forest lands.

Instead, the task force majority concedes that doing so would be impossible, given that the group had less than three months to develop recommendations.

The task force "generally agreed that we could not possible address specific road locations, economics, environmental effects on over 400,000 inventoried acres in the time available," says the opinion, which was signed by seven of the 12 members on the task force.

It also concludes that no desire exists to build specific roads, but desire does exist to retain management flexibility in roadless areas.

"After only two meetings of the task force, it was abundantly clear that every member believed that a majority of the acreage within most mapped roadless boundaries would probably never need a road, but many members could not accept a blanket resolution freezing the existing roadless boundaries as a line never to be crossed with a road or other management practices," says the majority opinion, which was penned by Fred Hodgeboom, president of Montanans for Multiple Use.

Hodgeboom said roadless areas, established in the 1970s through a nationwide inventory process, are considered untouchable.

The majority opinion asserts that Flathead forest officials, leery of litigation from environmental groups, are reluctant to carry out salvage logging in roadless areas affected by fire much less pursue other types of management activity in those areas.

"The lines on the map are relics of a process from 35 years ago," Hodgeboom said. "What began as a simple inventory has evolved into a line that designates an area to be managed for wilderness values."

Lisa Bate, a member of the "conservation minority," said that's one area where the task force strayed into subjects that will be addressed in the pending revision of the Flathead forest's long-term management plan.

There are backcountry areas, including roadless areas, in the proposed forest-plan revision that would allow for timber management.

"I felt like we couldn't stay on task as a committee, and that was disappointing to me," she said.

The minority report cites the values of roadless areas as reservoirs for wildlife habitat and high water quality.

"Not only can the Forest Service not afford to maintain existing roads," it says, "we believe roadless lands benefit and protect our outstanding water quality and wildlife and our quiet wildland recreation heritage."

Although the majority contends that certain types of logging can encourage browse growth and generally improve habitat for big-game species, roadless advocates in general say roads are harmful to wildlife, reducing security for big game species such as elk.

"I can't think of a single case where roads benefit wildlife," said Bate, a biologist who has done studies on the effects of roads on wildlife.

Referring to numerous studies, the minority opinion asserts that roadless areas are critical for healthy elk herds with larger bulls and that roadless protections can be tied directly to Montana's unique five-week general hunting season.

The majority opinion, however, calls for an end to roadless protections and management flexibility in some of the Flathead forest's most prominent roadless areas.

For the Mount Hefty, Tuchuck and Thompson-Seton areas of the North Fork, for instance, it recommends "manage for maximum flexibility for wildlife, recreation, timber production, watershed and remove the roadless designation."

That could amount to a direct challenge to the pending forest plan revision, considering that the proposed revision designates those areas as recommended wilderness and the task force will be meeting again to develop recommendations for the revision.

Hodgeboom said the task force meetings were carried out in a "businesslike" manner during the past three months with only occasional heated discussions.

He said divisions on the committee are tied to basic, core beliefs that stretch back to the philosophies of conservation advocate John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, the multiple-use minded founder of the Forest Service.

"Those two philosophies still very much exist out there, and that's what we're seeing in the majority and minority reports from this task force," he said.

"I believe in multiple use also," Bate said. "But to me, that doesn't mean that we have to do everything on every acre … That's why we have to designate certain areas for certain purposes."

At the committee's last meeting this week, there was confusion about the state of Montana's direction on the roadless issue, because Attorney General Mike McGrath intervened last week in a lawsuit that challenges the validity of the Bush administration's approach toward establishing management policies for roadless areas.

Some on the committee mistakenly assumed that Gov. Schweitzer also was intervening in the case.

He is not, said Hal Harper, Schweitzer's chief of staff, on Thursday.

"We're going forward with the process that we've outlined," he said, referring to Schweitzer's request for roadless input from counties. "We plan on going through with this process unless we're told to stop by a court."

The minority members of the task force say they have popular support.

The task force's majority opinion was signed by Hodgeboom, Richard Funk, Ron Stuber, Doug Denmark, Robbie Holman, John Hansen and Chuck Roady.

The minority opinion is unsigned, but the other members on the committee include Bate, Edwin Fields, Vic Workman, Bill Baum and Dave Hadden.

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