Logging, thinning, prescribed burns planned for North Fork

The Flathead National Forest is proposing a new project up the North Fork that would include a mix of logging, thinning and prescribed burns on more than 8,000 acres from Red Meadow Creek north to the Canada border.

The Frozen Moose project aims proposes commercial timber harvest on 3,552 acres, and noncommercial vegetation treatments including thinning and burning on 4,630 acres.

Non-commercial thinning results in the removal of small trees that are growing very close together in an attempt to make the forest more fire resilient.

The North Fork has seen some huge blazes since 1988 and in some cases, the regrowth has resulted in large stands of “doghair” lodgepole pine and other species that are growing close together.

The idea is to thin those stands in some cases to a 100 or less trees per acre, whereas in some areas they’re now they’re in the thousands of trees per acre.

Other stands will see “seed treatment” where just a handful of trees — 5 to 15 per acre are left. Those trees, however, as larger and more mature and provide seeds for future forests.

Most of the cutting units — there’s more than 300 proposed, are near roads and homes in the wildland urban interface. No cutting is proposed inside recommended wilderness, but prescribed burns are.

There will also be some units inside Roadless Rule areas. The Roadless Rule of 2001 doesn’t allow timber harvest generally, but it does allow for cutting to “reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire effects,” the document states.

The North Fork has seen large blazes, including the Red Bench Fire of 1988 and the Wedge Canyon Fire of 2003. About 20 percent of the land area has seen fire since ‘88. Those fires in particular were very large and burned well into Glacier National Park.

The project includes about 7 miles of temporary roads that will only be used for the project. They’ll be closed to public access after the project is completed.

The project also looks to restore sagebrush near the Flathead River by hand cutting down lodgepole pine that are encroaching. It also looks to replace key culverts that could potentially harm bull trout streams and it looks to cut or girdle encroaching spruce and other trees that are encroaching on whitebark pine stands.

The document details are available at https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=57310.

The project will take initial public comment until Jan. 17.

Electronic input may be submitted to: comments-northern-flathead-hungry-horse-glacier-view@usda.gov with “Frozen Moose Project” in the subject line. Acceptable formats include MS Word, RTF, or PDF.

Please send written input to:

Robert Davies, District Ranger

Hungry Horse-Glacier View Ranger District

P.O. Box 190340

Hungry Horse, MT 59919