Objections raised to Flathead National Forest Plan

The objection period for the new Flathead National Forest plan came to a close last week, marking another chapter in the process for a new Forest Plan. Planner Joe Krueger said the Forest will post the written objections on its web site Thursday.

The final draft of the plan was released to the public in mid-December. That triggered the objection period.

The new plan, a modified version of alternative B that was set in the draft environmental impact statement, sets the direction for land management of the 2.4-million acre Forest for the next 10 to 15 years.

It calls for the harvest of about 27 million board feet of saw logs a year and would add about 190,000 acres of recommended wilderness.

The plan, which cost about $2.4 million to devise, initially drew some 33,000 comments — many of them form letters. In order to object, however, a person or organization must have previously submitted substantive formal comments related to the forest plan, amendments, or draft EIS during the public comment periods. Objections must be based on previously submitted substantive formal comments attributed to the objector unless the objection concerns an issue that arose after the opportunities for formal comment.

That being said, 74 parties had raised objections to the plan as of late last week, Krueger said.

The next step would be to hold resolution meetings, likely in April with interested parties, Krueger said. After that, a regional Forest Service panel will look at the plan, review it, and make recommendations.

There’s been some concern from interested parties that the plan, which was devised under the Obama Administration, will be scrapped entirely once it reaches the desk of bureaucrats in Washington. The Trump administration has taken great pains to date to scrap many Obama-era policies.

The Whitefish Range Partnership raised the issue in a recent letter to Hungry Horse News.

“Ultimately, for our partnership to succeed, we need to see a signed forest plan. It’s important that officials in Washington, D.C. allow the Flathead Forest plan to proceed and conclude without top-down interference. The final plan should be signed following the official “objection period” that is currently underway,” the Partnership said.

The Partnership is a diverse group of interests, from loggers, to wilderness advocates that came together for more than a year to craft recommendations for future land use in the North Fork of the Flathead.

The Partnership’s vision remained largely intact in the new Forest Plan.

But Krueger said that so far, there hasn’t been Washington interference.

“There’s been no meddling whatsoever,” he said.

He said it was a quality plan that balances a host of interests.

“We’re trying to grow the economy while providing for the golden goose — pristine natural resources,” he said.

He noted the plan has state support from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a 414-page biological opinion, said the plan could adversely impact endangered species like bull trout, grizzly bears and lynx. However, those impacts would be to individual animals and would not jeopardize entire populations.

In fact, it noted that the grizzly bear population in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem is still growing about 2.4 percent annually. The NCDE includes most of the Flathead National Forest.

Some environmental groups have already made their objections public.

The Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan both have raised objections to the new plan, claiming it abandons standards for closing roads and ignores areas that should be recommended wilderness.

“The Flathead is abandoning road removal, the true habitat restoration it says is helping recover grizzly bears and bull trout,” said Swan View Coalition Chair Keith Hammer. “It is replacing that with road building and logging and trying to call that restoration. We don’t buy it and the science doesn’t support it.”

Under the new plan, the Forest recommends closing or decommissioning about 30 to 60 miles of roads. Under the old plan, more than 700 miles of roads were closed or decommissioned.

A decommissioned road is one that is made impassable — culverts are torn out and the road bed is tank trapped so vehicles can’t go up them.

Once that’s done, they largely revert back to forest land.