Obama administration sets new forest planning rules

The Obama administration recently announced new rules for creating management plans for National Forests, but don't expect work on a new Flathead National Forest plan anytime soon.

The Flathead Forest plan was last written in 1986. Since then, largely through lawsuits, it has been amended 24 times. The most rancorous amendment by far is Amendment 19, which calls for reducing roads across the forest to protect grizzly bears.

About six years ago, during the Bush administration, the Flathead Forest was close to having a new plan completed, but legal challenges on a nationwide scale brought that plan to a halt, noted Rob Carlin, a forest staff officer with the Flathead Forest.

Ultimately, federal courts ruled that the Bush way of creating forest plans skirted environmental laws. Now the Obama administration has come up with its way of creating and revising forest plans, which are supposed to be rewritten every 10 to 15 years.

The Obama plan calls for collaboration between stakeholders while protecting environmental values, like watersheds, plants and animals, using the best available science. The new plan would also streamline an objection process in the hopes of avoiding lawsuits. The Obama plan also allows for multiple use of lands and timber harvest.

The new rule-making process is expected to go into affect later this month, but the public shouldn't expect any immediate action on the Flathead Forest, said Carlin and Marsha Moore, a planning forester with the Flathead Forest.

For one, budget constraints prevent the Forest Service from starting the revision process again. At best, the Flathead Forest expects to have funding by late 2013 or 2014, they said. In the meantime, the Flathead Forest will continue to operate under the old rules and amendments as it has for decades.

Carlin said he hopes some of the work that was done in 2006 can be used in the new process, when it starts. But much has changed over the landscape as well. Wildfires have scorched tens of thousands of acres, and grizzly bears, by the time the planning process begins, could come off the Endangered Species Act list.