Montana’s First "Healthy Forests" Project
Threatens Bitterroot’s Old-Growth Forests

Note: The photos below were taken November 22, 2004 during a Native Forest Network monitoring trip to the Jennings Camp Creek and Colvert Creek areas within the Middle East Fork project. The Forest Service has slated these particular forests pictured below for "regeneratoin" logging – a clearcut that the Forest Service admits will leave 3 or 4 trees per acre. All photos by Native Forest Network.

If you would like more information about this project, please contact the Native Forest Network at 406.542.7343 or nfn@wildrockies.org. Monitoring trips are planned throughout the winter and spring. We hope you will join us!

The two photos above show clearcuts that are adjacent to unlogged, old-growth forests now slated for clearcut logging as part of this HFRA project. In each photo, the forest in the upper right is a proposed logging unit.
The two photos above were taken from the ridge between the Colvert Creek and Bertie Lord Creek. As you can see portions of the Middle East Fork project area have been heavily logged in the past. The clearcuts pictured above are from the late 1980s, during the height of logging on national forests. The last thing this area needs is even more logging, especially logging of old-growth, legacy trees in the remaining unlogged areas.