Forest plan comment deadline approaching

A major public review period for the Flathead National Forest’s first guiding document in 30 years is fast approaching, with comments due next Monday.

Released in draft form for public review earlier this year, the Flathead National Forest’s draft revised forest plan provides a blueprint for managing 2.4 million acres of forestlands in Northwest Montana.

The draft plan maps out 18 types of management areas throughout the forest, each defined by a distinct set of desired conditions and allowable uses and management actions. The plan also includes conservation strategies for plants and animals found throughout the forest — notably outlining policies for threatened species such as grizzly bears, lynx and bull trout.

Gary Krueger, leader of the interdisciplinary planning team that has worked on the plan for the past three years, noted that even the “untrammeled” Bob Marshall and Great Bear wilderness areas — together covering more than 1 million acres within the forest — are subject to rules, regulations and periodic human manipulation, such as wildfire suppression.

“This 2.4 million acres is a managed forest,” Krueger said in an interview last week. “You might want to think that it’s all wild, but the number one thing we manage for is public safety.”

However, he also noted that the agency typically only engages in active management, such as logging, thinning or fuels reduction, on about 10,000 acres of the forest’s vast land holdings per year.

“Certainly what we’re aspiring to do with this plan is to make the forest more resilient,” he said. “But when you look at it, it’s just a fingernail we’re touching.”

The Flathead Forest officially began its revision process in 2013, and doesn’t expect to have the document finalized until December 2017, at the earliest. In June, forest officials released the draft environmental impact statement for the revision.

Open for public comment until Oct. 3, the 532-page document outlines four possible planning scenarios, each with its own balance of priorities.

The first, Alternative A, is the “no-action” alternative. If selected, that alternative would retain the existing forest plan and amendments. It would also omit the grizzly bear management strategy included in the other three scenarios — a proposal that lays the groundwork for managing the regional grizzly population if and when the species is removed from the Endangered Species Act.

The no-action alternative would continue the existing land use designations throughout the forest. Broadly speaking, those designations include: 22 percent suitable timber production land; 17 percent backcountry; 33 percent general forest; and 4 percent recommended wilderness.

While Krueger noted that the forest has not identified a preferred alternative, Alternative B most closely resembles the draft plan revision unveiled as the forest’s “proposed action” last year. The alternative aims to strike a middle ground between conservation, timber and mechanized recreation interests.

Broader land use designations under Alternative B would include: 13 percent suitable timber production land; 13 percent backcountry; 30 percent general forest; and 8 percent recommended wilderness.

Aside from the no-action alternative, the forest plan revision would also include four “backcountry” management areas where no logging activities could occur, and each prescribing a different level of allowable motorized use. Land reclassified as such would mostly be drawn from “Management Area 2” lands under the current forest plan.

Under Alternative C, the forest would adopt a more conservation-based approached to forest management, with large swaths of recommended wilderness, a lower level of timber harvest and a sharp reduction in motorized uses in backcountry management areas.

Broader land use designations would include: 13 percent suitable timber production land; 6 percent backcountry; 25 percent general forest; and 21 percent recommended wilderness.

Finally, Alternative D takes the opposite tack and lends more priority to logging, active forest management and motorized backcountry access.

Broader land use designations would include: 21 percent suitable timber production land; 19 percent backcountry; 30 percent general forest; and 0 percent recommended wilderness.

For a specific breakdown of each alternative’s apportionment of land into different management areas, see Table 5 on page 51 of the draft environmental impact statement. Table 3 on page 34 provides a brief description of each management area.

A major component of Alternatives B, C and D is the inclusion of the proposed grizzly bear conservation strategy.

The management plan is the product of a multi-agency effort focused on the grizzly population residing in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE). The ecosystem spans 5.7 million acres and includes land in Glacier National Park, four national forests, tribal land, state forestland and a half-million acres of private property.

The proposed conservation strategy is controversial — particularly among environmental groups who have spent decades working to protect the species since its 1975 listing under the Endangered Species Act. While many have criticized the plan as not going far enough to ensure the species’ recovery will continue into the future, Krueger said last week that it retains many of the same practices that the Forest Service has employed throughout the past two decades.

The current forest plan was amended in 1995 with specific direction and bear recovery criteria for the 2.1 million acres of land in the Flathead Forest that fall within the established grizzly recovery area — about 37 percent of the total.

“During that time, the bear met all of the recovery criteria that were established,” Krueger said. “Obviously we were doing something right, [and] in 2011 the grizzly bears met all of the recovery criteria.”

However, he acknowledged that some of the directives of the existing grizzly amendment would be altered to better reflect how the forest’s management has played out in practice.

For example, he said the amendment’s requirements on road management in grizzly habitat have already led to decommissioning about 750 miles of the forest’s more than 2,000 miles of roads. The proposed conservation strategy would loosen those requirements, which Krueger said call for an additional 530 miles to be decommissioned.

“The grizzly core area was never intended to be inviolate,” he said, adding that the forest has still allowed limited salvage logging and other forest management activities within those areas.

More than 1,000 grizzly bears are believed to now reside in the NCDE, and wildlife agency officials have compared the health of the population to the one based in Yellowstone National Park, which was formally proposed for delisting earlier this year.

In order to synchronize the conservation strategy across other national forest land within the NCDE, forest plan amendments incorporating those management objectives are also being proposed for the Kootenai, Lolo and Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forests.

The forest released its “draft proposed action,” a preliminary outline of the plan, in March 2015.

A 70-day public comment period following the proposed action’s release prompted more than 20,000 public comments, although Krueger said all but 370 were identical “form” comments from interest groups.

Public comments on the plan’s draft environmental impact statement are due Oct. 3.

The final environmental impact statement and draft record of decision will include the forest’s selected alternative and is expected to be released in April 2017.

Forest officials anticipate the final record of decision to follow by the end of 2017.

To view the draft plan, environmental impact statement and supporting documents, visit www.fs.usda.gov/goto/flathead/fpr.

Comments on the draft environmental impact statement may be submitted by email to flatheadplanrevision@fs.fed.us, by fax to 406-758-5379 or in writing to: Flathead National Forest Supervisor’s Office, Attn: Forest Plan Revision, 650 Wolfpack Way, Kalispell, MT, 59901.

For additional information, contact Stacy Allen, at (406)-758-5200, or aeallen02@fs.fed.us.

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