Reforestation begins on Lolo hillsides, Maclay ski runs
This story has been updated from an earlier version
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) It will take at least a few decades, but a reforestation project intends to turn the Lolo foothills and ill-fated ski runs back into a forest.
On Monday, drivers on Highway 93 south of Lolo might have noticed some work activity on the lower slopes of Lolo Peak, including a few areas where former landowner Tom Maclay cleared a bunch of trees in 2006 to make ski runs.
Maclay’s actions were a bit premature, because his idea of building a high-end resort at the base of a ski area extending to the top of Lolo Peak never came to pass. Unfortunately, almost 20 years later, the empty ski runs still mar the mountainside.
The 2017 Lolo Peak Fire also took a toll on the surrounding mountainsides. But those areas may finally have a chance to grow in, thanks to another project that fell apart and the resulting partnership between Montana Forest Consultants, the nonprofit American Forests, Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and a handful of landowners along the Bitterroot foothills.
On Monday, Montana Forest Consultants workers started planting 24,000 ponderosa pine seedlings to restore the lower slopes of Lolo Peak. But those seedlings were intended for a different project and almost ended up in the compost pile, said Wes Swaffar, American Forests Northern Rockies director.
Some landowners in the southern part of the Bitterroot drainage had seen the forest around them turned to snags and ash by the wildfires of 2000. Years went by and the land saw little recovery as far as seedlings. So landowners started asking the DNRC for assistance with reforestation.
The DNRC turned to American Forests, which focuses on building partnerships to create healthy and resilient forests, which were lacking in parts of the southern Bitterroot. So the organization worked to find a willing landowner who would commit to a long-term reforestation project and wrote grants to grow the seedlings and do the planting work.
“We were about two years into it. Then the landowner pulled out of the project. They had maybe some unrealistic expectations. Not understanding that seedlings would take at least 10 years (to grow large enough to take off) and you wouldn’t see the benefit of large trees like you had before for many decades,” Swaffar said. “So that kind of left us holding the bag, having already made a request to the nursery to grow seedlings for the project. Specific seedlings that are adapted to the area and are the right species.”
American Forests had turned to the DNRC Nursery Program in Missoula for the seedlings and had specifically requested ponderosa pine adapted to grow in the southern Bitterroot at 4200 to 4800 feet elevation. So that limited where the seedlings could be used.
Then, when it looked like the seedlings had nowhere to go, Swaffar learned that Montana Forest Consultants were working with Lolo area landowners to try to reforest the lower slopes below Lolo Peak.
“So it was like, hey, let’s take this ‘little project that could’ - which obviously couldn’t with the previous landowner - and use it here. We have a turnkey opportunity to get these trees - high-quality, local seedlings - in the ground with a project that happens to be visible from town,” Swaffar said. “It seemed like a win-win.”
Once the ponderosa pine seedlings are planted this year, Montana Forest Consultants plans additional phases of restoration in subsequent years that will restore upper elevations with western larch. It will take about a decade for the pine seedlings to grow large enough to be visible from Highway 93 and start to obscure the ski runs.
This project is part of a larger effort by Montana Forest Consultants to plant nearly 500,000 ponderosa pine seedlings this spring in the Missoula, Bitterroot and Flathead valleys.
“Our company is delighted to bring together the vision of a national nonprofit organization dedicated to healthy forests with trees grown at our local Missoula Conservation Seedling Nursery and the logistics and reforestation skills of our team at Montana Forest Consultants to restore the beauty of the northern Bitterroot Valley,” said Zachary Bashoor, Montana Forest Consultants CEO, in a release. “We know that Lolo and Missoula residents have been hoping this reforestation project would come to fruition for more than a decade.”
The 2017 Lolo Peak fire started in the backcountry with a lightning strike in mid-July. Due to hot, dry, windy conditions, the fire moved north and east along U.S. Highway 12 and south along the eastern front of the Bitterroots. It continued to burn until September finally brought some moisture. While parts of the forest have started to recover on their own, the lower-elevation slopes tend to be hotter and drier, making it hard for any surviving seeds to generate.
After proposing the ski resort, cutting the ski runs on his property and trying to get a U.S. Forest Service Special Use Permit to expand the ski runs up to Lolo Peak, Maclay ran into trouble when Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Asset Holdings asked a Missoula County judge to foreclose on Maclay’s ranch in 2011. Met Life held the mortgages of Maclay’s property and Maclay owed the company a debt of more than $23 million.
Maclay had a year to find investors or partners to help him buy his land back.
In September 2012, the Bitterroot National Forest turned down Maclay’s proposal for a ski area because the development was inconsistent with guidelines in the Bitterroot and Lolo National Forest plans for the region.
Maclay lost his ranch to Met Life in early 2013 so he submitted subsequent proposals in June 2013 and again in 2014 where the resort would use all Forest Service land. Both were rejected.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.