State signs deal for federal timber harvest

Following Weyerhaeuser’s devastating announcement that it would shutter two of its mills in Columbia Falls — a loss of 200 jobs in the economically embattled city of 5,000 — the decades-long decline of Western Montana’s timber industry is igniting a heated debate in the state’s gubernatorial race.

On Monday, Gov. Steve Bullock announced the completion of an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service intended to boost timber harvest from federal forestland. The agreement, signed under the 2014 Farm Bill’s “Good Neighbor Authority,” allows for increased collaboration between state and federal foresters on forest management projects.

In some cases, it will allow the state to include lands in national forests when developing management projects primarily on state land.

The announcement came after months of criticism from Bullock’s Republican opponent, Bozeman businessman Greg Gianforte, who visited the Flathead Valley last week to discuss natural resource issues.

Gianforte noted that 18 other governors had already signed agreements with the Forest Service under the Farm Bill provision, and added after Monday’s announcement, “It’s unfortunate the governor needs an opponent to actually get him to do his job.”

John Tubbs, director of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, saidd that Bullock’s recently announced agreement had been in the works for months and was not a reaction to his election opponent’s rhetoric.

“The fact that the governor’s opponent has initiated a conversation on the GNA, we’re not reacting to that,” Tubbs said. “We have been moving forward systematically on the 2014 Farm Bill priorities in a way that I think has greatly improved the outlook.”

Some of the Good Neighbor Authority agreements signed by other states have yet to yield results, he said, while Bullock’s announcement came alongside several projects already approved under the authority.

Two logging and restoration projects in the Flathead National Forest and the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest will be the first conducted under the signed agreement, according to the Associated Press, and Bullock said two other projects have been undertaken without a formal deal.

During his “timber roundtable” discussion in Kalispell last week, Gianforte also chided Bullock for having done little to exercise another Farm Bill authority delegated to states that allows governors to designate up to 5 million acres of national forest land for fast-tracked forest management projects.

After the federal law was enacted, Bullock succeeded in designating 4.9 million acres of federal forests as “priority landscapes” and gave the Forest Service $1 million from the state’s hazardous fuels reduction fund to speed up approval of 15 projects that will provide an estimated 55 million board-feet of timber.

In Northwest Montana, that investment included $260,000 for three projects on over 4,000 acres in Flathead County, providing more than 4.6 million board-feet. Another 2.5 million board-feet will come from a pair of projects on the Lolo National Forest in Sanders and Mineral counties.

In his announcement Monday, the governor unveiled an additional $1 million for the Forest Service to complete 10 more projects providing an estimated 100 million board-feet statewide.

Gianforte said he wants to see more logging on federal land, and vowed to do more, if elected, to reform the Forest Service budget.

“We need 300 million board-feet of timber off of federal land in Montana to get our mills back to capacity. This 100 million board-feet is a drop in the bucket,” he said, adding that Bullock’s administration wasn’t represented during a recent congressional hearing for a federal forest reform bill supported by U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont.

The bill would have created pilot projects to allow the state to manage some tracts of national forest land, but has been attacked by those who believe it could open the door to a transfer of federal land to the states.

“I am very supportive of that type of legislation. I would have had someone there or been there myself,” Gianforte said.

Todd Morgan, the director of forestry industry research at the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said that while it isn’t a “silver bullet,” the projects announced by Bullock could provide some relief to the state’s wood products industry.

“I think there’s a potential for it to help improve the timber availability issue that a lot of mills in Montana are struggling with,” Morgan said. “The Forest Service is such a big manager of land in the state that what they do really has an impact on timber availability.”

While more than half of the state’s forestland open to timber harvest is under Forest Service control, those lands only provide 20 to 25 percent of Montana’s overall log supply. But Morgan said that’s still a higher proportion than many western states, including Idaho.

In 2015, that amounted to about 108 million board-feet from federal lands, out of 383 million harvested statewide. Morgan added the national forests also contain a much larger share of the state’s merchantable wood.

“In terms of the standing inventory, a lot of what’s of harvestable size and age class is predominantly in the national forests,” he said.

But even with increased harvest on priority landscapes, Montana State Forester Bob Harrington said that the limiting factor in how many of those national forest projects get approved lies with the Forest Service, hindered by insufficient budget allocations and an increasing obligation to divert money for fire suppression.

More than half of the agency’s budget last year was spent fighting wildfires.

“There’s a point where it doesn’t matter how much money we pour into them, unless Congress actually provides forest management dollars instead of borrowing for fire,” Harrington said. “Can we continue to push them? Yeah, and we are. But Region One is the number one in the nation in implementing Farm Bill authorities.”

Morgan said the ultimate impact of the Farm Bill provisions remains to be seen. The total harvest isn’t necessarily cumulative — the Forest Service’s limited capacity to administer harvest projects could simply be diverted toward “priority landscapes” and away from other ones.

But given the question marks surrounding the timber industry’s future in Montana, he said the heightened attention on state timber policy is a positive sign.

“It’s an important topic to be discussed, certainly,” Morgan said. “I think the fact that the conversation is happening, and that people see both candidates do have an interest in forest management in Montana is important to the state.”

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.