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Dec 12, 2023

Bitterroot logging gets emergency approval, objections nixed

Our favorite photos of the week from August 14 to August 20. A 143,340-acre logging and burning project spanning the length of the Bitterroot Mountains has been fast-tracked by the federal government,

Our favorite photos of the week from August 14 to August 20.

A 143,340-acre logging and burning project spanning the length of the Bitterroot Mountains has been fast-tracked by the federal government, meaning the public cannot formally object to the proposal before it’s approved.

The burn scar of the 2016 Roaring Lion fire blankets the landscape around Roaring Lion Creek in the Bitterroot Range, pictured here from Ward Mountain Trailhead on June 24, 2022.

U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore has deemed the Bitterroot Front Project an “emergency action,” the Bitterroot National Forest announced late last month. The determination allows the Forest Service to skip a step of the project’s public approval process: soliciting and responding to formal objections before the project is finally approved and implemented.

The agency released a 386-page draft environmental assessment (EA) for the project Aug. 16 and is accepting comments through Sept. 16.

A major forestry and fuels treatment project proposed for the Bitterroot National Forest has community members and stakeholder groups divided on whether thinning the forest is the best way to reduce wildfire risk and enhance habitat, and whether the U.S. Forest Service's approach to analyzing the project provides adequate analysis and public input.

The project is a mixture of commercial logging — including some clearcut logging — non-commercial logging (often called thinning), and prescribed burning along the length of the Bitterroots’ eastern face, on the west side of the Bitterroot Valley. Bounded by high-mountain wilderness to the west and private property in the valley to the east, the project spans 57 linear miles from McClain Creek near Lolo on the north to Trapper Creek southwest of Darby on the south. The initial proposal unveiled last year also included some recreation enhancements, but those have been removed as part of the emergency action determination.

Forest Service officials say the project will reduce wildfire risk on the landscape by reducing fuel loads across the timbered mountain face that looms above private property in the valley below. And, they say, the project will also enhance the forest for foliage and wildlife by creating forest conditions closer to what the agency says were historical conditions in the area — conditions that predated widespread logging and full-suppression wildland firefighting.

By reducing fuels, the draft EA states, the landscape will be less susceptible to raging stand-replacement fires: blazes that burn through tree crowns and torch entire sections of the forest. Instead, the forest would be more ripe for higher-frequency but lower-severity fires that burn mostly ground fuels, which the agency argues was the norm before significant logging and firefighting.

In general, according to the draft EA, that can be accomplished by increasing the spacing between trees and reducing so-called midstory “ladder fuels” that allow ground fire to climb into tree crowns.

The project also proposes to change forest composition by reducing the amount of some tree species more conducive to crown fires — for example, removing Douglas fir and favoring spaced-out and fire-tolerant Ponderosa pine on the slopes near Lake Como.

The project anticipates 54,046 acres of prescribed burning alone; 35,575 acres of non-commercial logging coupled with prescribed burning for whitebark pine restoration; 27,477 acres of commercial logging with prescribed burning; 16,019 acres of vegetation slashing and burning; and 3,163 acres of non-commercial logging and prescribed burning. Some of those areas could overlap.

Other activities without determined acreages include “tree planting, meadow restoration, aspen restoration, native vegetation revegetation, biological weed control, mastication, herbicide weed control, hazard tree removal, and chipping.”

Forest thinning in recent years is visible above Lake Como during a field trip of the proposed Bitterroot Front Project on June 24, 2022.

It will take dozens of miles of roadwork to do all that. The draft EA outlines 1.98 miles of new permanent road construction, 27 miles of temporary road construction and 8.54 miles of existing unofficial roads added into the formal road system. Meanwhile, 10.08 miles of official road will be decommissioned; 0.62 miles of official road and 0.7 miles of unofficial road will be reclassified as trails. Another 51.6 miles of unofficial roads will be obliterated in the project, but 2.28 miles of that will first be used during the project. Overall, the draft EA proposes a net loss of 25.48 miles of official road.

Work is proposed to span four years, from 2024 through 2027.

Critics of the proposal argue that the significant removal of vegetation — including live trees and brush and standing and downed dead timber — will actually promote wildfire spread by allowing uninhibited wind to whip flames through opened-up forest that’s been dried by more wind and sun penetration. And some conservation groups worry that wildlife and habitat will be harmed by the removal of vegetation and the road-building and usage associated with the project.

An old-growth timber stand managed by the Bitterroot National Forest, seen during a field trip of the proposed Bitterroot Front Project on June 24, 2022.

A body of science supports the idea that “forest treatments” — a regime of logging, thinning and burning — can reduce wildfire risk on a landscape and make firefighting efforts more successful. But critics of widespread forest treatments can point to other studies that cast doubt on their efficacy, and on the idea that forests in western Montana used to be dominated by spread-out Ponderosa pine with frequent low-severity fire.

Forest Service leaders and wildland firefighters often cite specific incidents in which forest fires are slowed down or reduced in severity upon running into areas where fuels, particularly ladder fuels, have been thinned. Clearing ground and ladder fuels, and constructing clear-cut fire breaks is a primary method of containing wildfire. But critics of large-scale forest treatments point out that large, aggressive wildfires often burn indiscriminately through treated and untreated forests.

Grizzly bears tend to die in or disperse from roaded forests, according to numerous studies collected by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee. Grizzly sow and cub survival generally falls when the density of open roads surpasses 0.64 miles of road per square mile of land. The Bitterroots don’t have a resident population of grizzlies, but the bruins are known to traverse its northern reaches. And the range is a designated recovery zone for the federally protected species. Plus, a recent court decision ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a plan to reintroduce grizzlies to the area.

Jacquie Parks, a fuels specialist with the Bitterroot National Forest, explains forest treatment methods at Lake Como during a field trip of the proposed Bitterroot Front Project on June 24, 2022.

The Forest Service has also come under fire on the project for employing conditions-based analysis. Normally the agency would propose specific actions for specific locations, and then analyze the impacts. For example, a mixture of commercial logging and prescribed burning might be proposed for a 175-acre unit of land near Trapper Creek. That would be specified in an EA and the public could comment on it.

Under conditions-based analysis, the agency instead developed a menu of sorts for various conditions that exist across the project area, as well as the accompanying treatments that will be used on those areas to create a desired condition. Rather than specifying during project analysis what will happen where, the agency will instead use the EA’s rubric during implementation to decide where to act.

Forest Service officials say the method offers much-needed flexibility: Conditions may change as yearslong analysis and implementation play out, rendering useless narrow proposals of specific work for specific locations if conditions shift between analysis and actual work. If an area burns after the EA but before it’s treated, for example, the Forest Service can still perform work at the site because officials aren’t locked in to a specific, pre-approved treatment for any one area. Rather, they use the EA to select the treatment prescribed for the conditions found in an area upon implementation.

Critics of the method decry the fact that the agency doesn’t state during project analysis exactly what will occur where, preventing the public from commenting on specific work proposed for specific locations.

No objection period

An EA is a government agency process of detailing a proposed action, analyzing the proposal’s impacts and determining how to mitigate those impacts. The system, laid out by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), requires that the Forest Service take public comment at a variety of junctures during the so-called “NEPA process.” One of those comment periods began when the draft EA was released Aug. 16.

Normally, people and organizations who submit comments during that period are later allowed to file formal objections to a project once a final EA is released. Only people who submitted timely and relevant comments on the draft can object to the final EA. Then Forest Service would consider and respond to objections with an administrative review of a project before a record of decision can be signed. A project can only be implemented once a record of decision has been signed. After that, the public’s only recourse to alter or halt a project is to sue the Forest Service.

Cheri Hartless, a silviculturist with the Bitterroot National Forest, speaks about managing old-growth timber stands during a field trip of the proposed Bitterroot Front Project on June 24, 2022.

But Moore’s emergency action determination for the Bitterroot Front Project means that the Forest Service will not take objections on the proposal before signing a record of decision and starting work.

The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law gave Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack, whose department oversees the Forest Service, the ability to determine situations in which emergency action is “necessary to achieve relief from hazards threatening human health and safety or to mitigate threats to natural resources” on or adjacent to national forests, according to an internal Forest Service memo Moore sent in March 2023. The Forest Service’s 2022 Wildfire Crisis Strategy identified 250 “high-risk firesheds” across the U.S. Vilsack declared all 250 firesheds an emergency, and he gave Moore the authority to grant emergency approval on projects aimed at reducing wildfire risk in those areas. Five of those firesheds are in the Bitterroot National Forest; four of those are within the Bitterroot Front Project area.

Because the project is no longer subject to a pre-decision objection review, “It is critical that the public provide feedback during the designated comment period described below, as they will not be able to raise additional project concerns during an objection period,” Forest Service spokesperson Tod McKay wrote in a Aug. 17 statement announcing the draft EA. Comments may be submitted online at fs.usda.gov/project/?project=57341 by clicking on the “Comment/Object” link. Comments can be mailed or hand-delivered to Forest Supervisor Matt Anderson at Bitterroot National Forest 1801 N. First St. Hamilton, MT 59840.

Officials from the U.S. Forest Service speak at Lake Como during a field trip of the proposed Bitterroot Front Project on June 24, 2022.

Joshua Murdock covers the outdoors and natural resources for the Missoulian.

Joshua Murdock covers the outdoors and natural resources for the Missoulian.

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Outdoors Reporter

Our favorite photos of the week from August 14 to August 20.