Salvage sale won't be fast tracked

The Flathead National Forest will have to prepare a formal environmental assessment on a proposed salvage sale in the Trail Creek Fire burn near the Great Bear Wilderness.

Spotted Bear District Ranger Deb Mucklow said last week that an Emergency Situation Determination was denied by Forest Chief Tom Tidwell. Local environmental groups opposed the project because of its proximity to wilderness. The Swan View Coalition led a letter-writing campaign opposing the project, but Mucklow said that wasn’t why the emergency determination was denied. She said there were other higher priority projects the Forest Service was considering that were set for this summer.

The Trail Creek project calls for winter logging, she noted.

She said a formal document on the project will be released for public review in June.

The original plan was to salvage timber from a little more than 1,300 acres of the Trail Creek Fire near Spotted Bear. The fire burned more than 21,456 acres, but the bulk of that was in inventoried roadless areas or in the Great Bear Wilderness.

The plan called for building 7 miles of roads in previous road grades. After the harvest, the roads, plus an additional mile of existing road would be placed in what the Forest Service termed “intermittent stored service.” The new roads would not remain open to motorized use.

The project looks to harvest between 6 and 7 million board feet of timber. About 246 acres of the burned area were initially part of the Spotted Bear River project that was approved before the fire.

The area is considered core grizzly bear habitat. Most of the salvage could occur in the Bent Creek and South Creek drainages.