Timber tour connects residents to their roots

Since 1997, the Flathead Timber Tour has been helping local residents see the forest for the trees.

“A lot of people never get to see a timber operation,” despite timber’s major local presence, said Kate Lufkin with the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce. She said the chamber has sponsored the event for so many years to allow people to “see the economic impact of a single tree.”

Every fall, the timber tour brings visitors to the site of active timber harvests to learn about the process and the role of local Montana wood in their daily lives. This year, the tour took place at the site of the Liger timber sale on the Flathead National Forest.

The 387-acre sale is a new project under the Good Neighbor Authority, a national initiative to allow states to manage federal lands. It was sold to St. Onge Logging Inc., of Kalispell, and is the third GNA project in the state and the first in the Flathead Valley.

“Through the GNA we are actually able to keep a lot of revenue in-state,” Department of Natural Resources and Conservation State Forester Sonya Germann said. These projects support local jobs, generate revenue for local economies, add capacity for forest management, protect against wildfires and put funding back into local projects to continue utilizing the lands.

Instead of siphoning funds away from the federal Forest Service, Germann explained state entities operate with “mutual objectives with the Forest Service” and allow all of the collaborators to “do more work on federal lands.”

“There’s so much work that needs to be done,” she said. “We’re adding capacity.”

This unique federal program is firmly rooted in the local Flathead community. Ben Garrett, the Federal Engagement Forester for the DNRC in Kalispell, reported the logs harvested there—mostly lodgepole pine and Douglas fir—go on to the Weyerhaeuser plants in Evergreen and Columbia Falls, as well as Stillwater Post and Pole near Olney.

Paul Donnellon, a forester with the Forest Service, emphasized the interconnectedness of the timber industry throughout the valley and the range of benefits it creates. “There’s so much coordination in forest management in the valley,” he said. “There’s a lot of interplay there that makes it all work.”

With so many cooperative players, the timber industry is responsible for numerous jobs at every stage, from the harvest, to the mills, to the sale of wood products. The recent GNA agreement created 6.5 full-time forestry jobs in Montana, and the Liger site, while only considered a small timber sale, has generated more than a dozen jobs.

In order to continue generating jobs and revenue, those involved with the project are careful to keep the harvest sustainable. Donnellon pointed out people might not know they conduct a “prescription” ahead of the harvest to diagnose the current condition of a stand of trees and make a plan for its desired outcome.

He said there is a perception of a “fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants mentality.” But, he said, “it’s not that way. There’s a lot of thought, science and preparation” that goes into each harvest.

Sustainability measures include making sure not to cut more trees than grow in a single year, cutting desired trees in the middle of the tree stand’s life to give space to other tree species and focusing on the smaller, least healthy trees in a stand.

They are also careful about leaving habitat for wildlife and taking protective measures for soil, habitat areas, riparian buffers and other important environmental factors.

As evidence of the sustainability of local logging and timber manufacturing, Lufkin pointed out wood products are “the oldest form of manufacturing in Montana.”

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at bserbin@dailyinterlake.com or 758-4459.