Forest Service closer to finalizing Frozen Moose project

The Flathead National Forest has moved forward with a plan for logging and tree thinning up the North Fork.

The Frozen Moose project has entered the next phase of planning with the release of a draft decision.

The plan proposes 8,077 acres of vegetation treatments to reduce forest fuels. The whole project area evaluated is approximately 151,000 acres, of which 3,180 acres are proposed for commercial timber harvest, 4,897 acres are proposed for noncommercial vegetation treatments, and 89 percent of proposed treatments are within the wildland-urban interface, meaning the forest is close to homes, which could potentially burn down in the event of a wildfire.

On the road side of things, the project includes replacing and removing culverts and restoring approximately 3 miles of old road to forest condition.

It would add 13 miles of historical road back to the forest’s road system. Those roads would be made impassable after project completion. The project would also construct 6.4 miles of temporary road to be used for project activities and then restored back to forest condition. Public motorized access would not change in the area.

The project could take up to 10 years to complete, an environmental assessment notes.

The plan has been revised from its original version. It added some units based on public comment and subtracted others.

One unit was taken out to preserve old-growth forests, others were put in to thin trees near homes at the request of landowners.

Nearly all of the area has burned in the past 100 years and some of it, particularly in areas that burned in both 1988 and 2003, having grown back to dense stands of trees like lodgepole pine that are prone to wildfire.

The plan is to thin those trees and promote more fire resilient species like western larch.

The plan also looks to promote whitebark pine in higher elevations and reduce lodgepole encroachment in the sagebrush prairies at lower elevations. Though the acreage for whitebark is relatively small — less than 300 acres total.

The project does have logging in more than 1,000 acres of core grizzly habitat. It notes that the timber harvest would be done outside of the denning period for bears.

All told, the project would result in the harvest of about 11 million board feet of timber. It also calls for 546 acres of prescribed burns.

The project’s scope runs from Polebridge to the border and then west to the Whitefish Divide. The project is now in an objection period, which is required by U.S. Forest Service regulation.