Forest expands 'fire use' areas
Agency to allow some fires to burn outside wilderness areas
It's been used in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex for years, but now the Flathead National Forest plans to implement a "fire use" policy in specific areas outside wilderness.
The forest intends to designate mostly high-elevation areas around Hungry Horse Reservoir and near the Bob Marshall Wilderness for the wildland fire-use program, which allows natural fires to burn under certain circumstances in specific locations.
The forest is hosting an information meeting from 4 to 7 p.m. May 31 at the North Valley Community Center in Columbia Falls.
Because the policy is authorized in a long-range forest plan adopted in the 1980s, there will be no formal environmental review and public comment period for the new policy, said Spotted Bear District Ranger Deb Mucklow and Allen Chrisman, the forest's fire management officer.
Although forest officials intend to designate large swaths of forest for wildland fire use, actual implementation of the policy will be "relatively rare," Chrisman predicts.
That's because naturally ignited fires will be allowed to burn only when they satisfy a matrix of conditions: burning conditions, incoming weather patterns, air-quality concerns, recreation interests, risks to developed areas, desired benefits for vegetation and wildlife, and geographic and topographic considerations, to name a few.
"It's important for folks to know that even in the wilderness, where we have been doing this for years, we suppress about 50 percent of fires," Mucklow said.
Chrisman gave an example of where the policy might have been an effective forest-management tool: Last fall, the forest was igniting fires in the Paint-Emery Project area for improved wildlife browse conditions and forest vibrancy. If lightning had touched off a simultaneous fire on adjacent lands designated for fire use, the forest would have been obliged to suppress it.
If a lightning fire turned up during the fall high on the Swan Mountain Range just before a forecasted heavy rain, the forest would have been required to put it out. That may not be the case under the current policy.
"This is just a logical extension of the program we use in the wilderness," Chrisman said.
Chrisman and Mucklow stressed that the designated areas are not part of lands considered the forest's "suitable timber base."
A draft version of the policy designates 115,794 acres in the West Hungry Horse Fire Management Area, including parts of Columbia Mountain; 92,270 acres in the East Hungry Horse Management Area; and 187,585 acres in the Spotted Bear Fire Management Area.
The Lolo, Bitterroot and Lewis and Clark national forests are pursuing similar policies in differing degrees, Mucklow said.
The Flathead's policy eventually could be expanded to other parts of the forest.
The Forest Service cautiously introduced wildland fire use to the 2-million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in 1981, with a 230-acre fire that was allowed to burn in the Cigarette Creek drainage, and more significantly in 1985, with the 5,000-acre Charlotte Peak Fire. It was a big change for an agency with a firefighting culture and policies built over decades, directing all available resources to put every fire out. Between the infamous fires of 1910 and 1981, Forest Service records indicate that only 5,000 acres burned in the wilderness complex because of the Forest Service's highly effective firefighting machine.
It was acknowledged before the 1980s, however, that complete fire exclusion was having adverse environmental effects in the wilderness, where logging is not allowed and forest ecology has evolved with fire across centuries.
Since the early 1980s, several hundred thousand acres have burned in the wilderness under a fire-use plan that gradually has been modified for the best results.
"We basically stole the format from our Bob Marshall Guidebook" for the new fire-use policy, Chrisman said.
But the decision to allow a fire to burn on Columbia Mountain will have far more restrictive considerations than a decision to allow a fire to burn in the middle of the wilderness.
Maps reflecting the draft policy are available on the Flathead forest's Web site at:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/flathead/
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com