Seeing, protecting the trees in your forest

Around the rim of our valley covering the slopes of the mountain ranges are forests. In the past, most of these lands were owned by large corporations or Uncle Sam or were American Indian lands.

Today, through a patchwork of transactions, we own bits of these forests. The holdings might be a few acres for many to a few hundred acres for some to a few thousand acres for a few. The question for us all is what will happen to these forests in the future now that our precious views are in the hands of so many. If you are an owner, where do you learn about your forest and how to manage your responsibilities?

In many of the western states, the act of creating stewardship plans for forestland is left to the professionals. Too much to know and too difficult for the ordinary folk are phrases used. Not so for Montana, where we have the tradition of independence. We were the first state to create a forest stewardship program with community-based workshops to train owners and land managers to develop their own plans, a model that only a few other states have adopted.

The current program is operated by Montana State University Extension Forestry, which is a branch of the MSU Extension Service that is cooperatively operated with the University of Montana College of Forestry and Conservation in Missoula. Its mission is to teach more than 50,000 of us about our 4 million forested acres of Montana and to guide us through the process of developing a stewardship plan for our little pieces of nature.

Neat trick, but most of us do not have the time to get degrees in forestry, agriculture and economics. We certainly do not have the energy to become loggers, firefighters, or operate tree and plant nurseries to provide the replacement trees and grass seeds needed to rejuvenate the land.

So how do we get this knowledge and build a plan in say a week to ten days for less than a hundred dollars? We get to know Cindy Bertek, forest stewardship coordinator, and her crew of professionals at one of the Stewardship Workshops offered each summer in western Montana. One of these is the annual course at the Yellow Bay Experiment Station on Flathead Lake.

Before the course, you get a mailing with a DVD and instructional materials that help you set the stage by developing goals for your own footprint of nature. Your homework has begun.

From the first moment of the gathering in the classroom, you get to know an experienced band of teachers.

Bertek has prepared notebooks of materials and pamphlets about the topics. The key is a notebook that carefully outlines each of the steps for building a stewardship plan including conducting a survey of your personal forestland with legal address, aerial maps and plastic overlays for developing management units. The training extends to the field as excited students learn how to measure and age trees and conduct plot surveys.

After a mere two days of concentrated classroom and field training, it is off to your land to practice what you learned by conducting a guided survey of your own piece of the last best place.

Then back to the classroom where you are guided through the process of completing your personal stewardship plan to meet the goals that you and your family have for sustaining a forested landscape. The final step in the process is an inspection visit by one of your newly made professional forestry friends.

When the course ends, you will be changed. You will know the names of the trees, forbs and grasses on your land. You will have a certified stewardship plan, your plan for taking care of your forest, and a sign to place on the post at the entrance to show what you are doing. The plan will be your map to growing a sustained forest for all of us to see. As one experienced forester at the course says "You will never look at a forest the same way again. Instead of the forest, you will see the trees."

Kuehl is a resident of Kalispell.