Helena and Lewis and Clark National Forest begin plan process
The sun sets along Hurricane Ridge and Walling Reef on the Rocky Mountain Front in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
The Helena Lewis and Clark National Forest has taken the first steps in revising its forest plan, releasing its proposed action earlier this month.
The sprawling forest includes the Rocky Mountain Front from Marias Pass to south of Helena. It also has tracts of land as far east as Lewistown. The two forests combined in 2015.
It contains about 500,000 acres of designated wilderness, including the eastern portions of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.
The plan area is made up of a series of distinctive landscapes and “island” mountain ranges, identified as geographical areas. It straddles the Continental Divide in southwestern and central Montana, and is characterized by the topographical transition between western mountainous terrains and eastern prairie grasslands. The elevation ranges from about 3,000 feet along the Missouri, Clark Fork, and Blackfoot rivers to over 9,000 feet on mountain peaks. The dissected nature of the area has unique implications for ecosystem function.
The plan area extends into three distinct ecoregion sections: the Belt Mountain section, the Bitterroot Valley section, and the Rocky Mountain Front section.
The proposed action identifies a little more than 1 million acres along the Rocky Mountain Front. According to the plan, about 352,000 acres are already designated wilderness, 197,000 acres are conservation management areas and about 360,000 acres are inventoried roadless areas. The conservation management area also has a host of road restrictions.
The 130,000 acre Badger-Two Medicine area is about 17 percent of the region.
Most of the region is unroaded and has little or no motorized use. Only about 7 percent of the landscape has motorized use.
According to the plan, none of the lands in the Rocky Mountain Range are considered suitable for timber production, though some timber harvest could occur for habitat restoration, fuels reduction and tribal treaty rights in the Badger-Two Medicine.
About 97 percent of the Rocky Mountain Range either had “very high” or “high” scenic value.
In short, the plan doesn’t call for much management changes for the Front.
The plan can be downloaded at https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/helena/landmanagement/planning and then follow the links.
Several public meetings are scheduled on the proposed plan. The closest meeting is in Browning at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Feb. 1 from 5 to 7 p.m.