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Grizzly Bear Habitat
and Old-Growth Threatened by Industrial Logging near Glacier
National Park in Montana.
"We're not granting special privileges
to anybody. We're giving priority to logging over recreational
uses or any other use."
- Hungry Horse District Ranger Jimmy DeHerrera explaining
the public closure of areas on the Flathead National Forest
due to industrial logging operations (Daily Interlake, Feb.
12, 2005)
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| Photos from the Beta timber sale on
the Flathead National Forest, Montana taken by the Native
Forest Network on March 14, 2005. |
In 2003 285,825 acres on the Flathead National Forest were affected
by fire. Following immediately after the fire, the Forest Service
began surveys of the fire's effects and in 2004 proposed post
fire logging projects in every single major fire area on the
Flathead National Forest outside wilderness. This resulted in
three major post fire logging projects: the Robert-Wedge, the
Westside Reservoir, and the Crazy Horse III.
The Robert-Wedge post fire logging project includes two separate
fires. The Wedge fire is located near the Canadian border
and the Robert fire is located just north of Columbia Falls
and south of the Moose Fire of 2002. These fires also burned
into Glacier National Park. The Westside Reservoir fire complex
included four fires: the Beta fire, Doe fire, Blackfoot fire
and the Ball fire, located along the west side of the Hungry
Horse Reservoir. The Crazy Horse III fire is located in the
Swan Valley, southwest of Condon, spanning the Mission Mountains
Wilderness.
According to the Flathead National Forest, the goal of these
projects is to leave only a few trees per acre of either Douglas
fir or western larch. Everything else will be logged and removed
from the landscape leaving a patchwork of clearcuts and heavily
logged stands devoid of most naturally occurring species including
western red cedar, grand fir, subalpine fir, white pine, spruce,
lodgepole, or birch.
Due to such aggressive post fire logging
policies in the past and now as the Flathead National
Forest is currently implementing, burned and unlogged
forest is one of the rarest of forest types within the
Flathead National Forest and the Northern Rockies over
all. Indeed large tracts of burned, unlogged forest
habitat are confined almost entirely to designated wilderness
areas such as the Bob Marshall and to National Parks
such as Glacier National Park.
The post fire environment is of immediate value to
a host of animal and bird species and is one of the
major creative forces of habitat diversity over the
long term. |
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Natural recovery of the
forest in Glacier National Park the spring following the
Robert Fire of 2003. Photo by Cameron Naficy |
Post fire logging such as the Flathead National Forest has
proposed in the burned forests of 2003 turns these forests
into a patchwork of clearcuts with heavily damaged soils and
new roads that fragment grizzly bear habitat and feed sediment
into clear, fish inhabited streams. The long term consequences
of post fire logging are well documented. Short term impacts
such as wildlife displacement, habitat degradation, soil compaction
and erosion, and increased susceptibility to future fires
are well known. Long term impacts have been studied to a lesser
degree but recent studies have shown that post fire salvage
logging retards natural recovery of burned landscapes over
the long term and results in significant, long term decreases
in forest productivity.
The Flathead National Forest currently has not assessed the
impacts of its proposal to log burned forest in all of the
fire areas burned outside of designated wilderness areas in
2003. Despite the lack of such assessments, the Flathead National
Forest, under the supervision of Cathy Barbouletos, has continued
to push forward with these projects at a rapid pace. The Regional
Forester Gail Kimball, in charge of all National Forests in
Western Montana, has authorized an emergency fast tracking
of these logging projects that allows logging to begin even
before the public process is finished.
The Flathead's Response to Fire
See a
map of the 2003 fires and post fire logging projects in the
Flathead National Forest
Project Specific Information
A review
of the Flathead National Forests Mortality Guidelines
Video Clips from the
Project Area
What you can do
Click
here for an action alert or let the Forest Service know
how you feel by contacting the following officials:
Cathy Barbouletos, Flathead Supervisor: cbarbouletos@fs.fed.us
Joe Krueger, Environmental Coordinator, Flathead NF: jkrueger@fs.fed.us
Gail Kimbell, USFS Regional Forester, Missoula: akimbell@fs.fed.us
Express your opinion by writting a letter to the
editor about what is currently taking place on the Flathead
National Forest.
Missoulian: oped@missoulian.com
Daily Interlake: edit@dailyinterlake.com
Missoula Indy: btyer@missoulanews.com
Headwaters News:
editor@headwatersnews.org
Join concerned citizens
and the Forest Service for a tour of the Beta Logging Project
on Tuesday, March 1, 2005
Contact the Native
Forest Network to learn how you can help: 406.542.7343.
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