Lolo Forest hands control of projects over to state, locals

Laura Lundquist

(Missoula Current) This week, the Lolo National Forest publicized two initiatives that allow more state involvement and less public input in logging projects. Some citizens claim it’s a return to “logging without laws” from the 1990s.

On Monday, the Lolo National Forest announced a new initiative, the Blackfoot River Valley Landscape Mosaic Joint Chiefs Project, that will allow logging and burning in the upper Blackfoot Valley. No project map was provided, and the announcement described the location only as “across connected drainages like Monture, Cottonwood Dunham and Horseshoe Hills.”

According to the Lolo Forest announcement, the project will focus on logging, thinning and burning; improving roads and stream crossings; weed treatments; and survey and design work for future improvements. Local contractors will be used to do the work.

An NRCS announcement said “this project will create safer, more resilient forests across management boundaries while sustaining a robust forest products industry.” The project received $979,800 in federal funding.

“This Joint Chiefs’ partnership helps us move forward together in places that matter most to local communities,” said Kevin Dohertey, Seeley Lake District Ranger.

The Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership is a collaboration between the Forest Service and the NRCS where they work with local partners to conduct forest activities at a bigger scale. Since 2014, the two agencies have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to projects across the nation to increase “the pace and scale of hazardous fuels reduction and forest restoration treatments.”

But national forest watchdogs say the project is allowing work to occur in the name of reducing “hazardous fuels” without public notice or input.

“Why does Monture Creek need to be logged? Give me a break - it already burned (in the 2017 Rice Ridge Fire). They’re just going after all of it in the name of fire risk,” said Mike Bader, consultant for the Flathead-Lolo-Bitterroot Citizen Task Force. “This is preceding the (Lolo) Forest Plan. They’re eliminating forest planning, travel planning - it’s just a free-for-all. There is no more NEPA and no more public involvement. The only part of the public that’s involved are the collaborators.”

The Lolo National Forest is currently going through a Forest Plan revision to replace the plan that has been in place since 1986. Forest plans provide the managers with a framework and direction to reach long-term desired conditions in various regions. The draft of the new Lolo Forest Plan is supposed to be released in late July or early August. Bader said it's likely to include many of the changes the Lolo Forest has recently announced.

On Thursday, the Lolo Forest’s second announcement said the Lolo Forest would be working more closely with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to carry out more logging projects under the Shared Stewardship Agreement signed last year by Governor Greg Gianforte and Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz.

The Forest Service and the state of Montana have been logging and burning thousands of acres of national forest under the Good Neighbor Authority since 2014. But those projects were designed by the Forest Service. Under the 20-year Shared Stewardship Agreement, the Montana DNRC can design the projects.

“Instead of waiting for the Forest Service to give them a project, we're going to do a NEPA analysis over that whole project area, and then the state is going to manage that within their own jurisdiction,” Schultz told MTN in July.

Over the last few months, DNRC and Lolo Forest have been working to identify a shared stewardship landscape of approximately 345,000 acres. The Kootenai, Flathead and Bitterroot national forests already have shared stewardship processes in place, so the addition of the Lolo Forest will cover most of western Montana.

Some say this could be a preview of what’s going to happen when the Forest Service reorganization is carried out and supervisors of national forests within each state are forced to relocate to state capitols. The state government will essentially be in charge.

“The addition of this third landscape places our total acreage under this historic agreement at 750,000 acres,” Gianforte said in a statement Thursday. “This new Shared Stewardship landscape on the Lolo National Forest builds on our commitment to active forest management and ensures we are taking responsibility today for the forests that future generations will inherit.”

But again, public land watchdogs say that’s another 345,000 acres where the public has no say in what the state ends up doing.

"This administration is making it harder for the public to engage in Forest Service projects, and these arrangements represent a concerning trend where the states are managing federal public lands further eroding transparency and public involvement,” said Adam Rissien, WildEarth Guardians rewinding manager, in an email.

Bader pointed to the wording of the 2025 Stewardship Agreement, which says the agencies will use categorical exclusions to prevent public input; accelerate environmental reviews; and use all tools, including “new tools that can be used to facilitate active forest management, including current and future emergency authorities."

“That indicates that they’re going to come up with more emergency categories. So what it comes down to is it’s logging without laws. They did that back in the ‘90s with the salvage logging rider, which expired. This is logging without laws 2.0. What they’re saying is we’re going to get the cut out at all costs and every other consideration be damned,” Bader said. “The Forest Service has lost all credibility - it’s simply a tool of the administration. It has no independence.”

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.