Friday, Sept. 23, 2005

Armed Guard Escorts Local Citizen Out of Public Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor's Office During Press Conference for Release of Montana's First Healthy Forest Restoration Act Project

These local citizens - including 80-year-old man whose father was Supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest from 1935 to 1955 - have been trying to work with the Forest Service on this "collaborative" project for a year

Forest Service's "preferred alternative" was opposed by 98% of the 10,000 plus citizen's who commented on the draft plan

Read Editorials from Local Newspapers, the Ravalli Republic and Helena Independent Record

For additional information:
Larry Campbell: 406.821.3110
Jim Miller: 406.381.0644
Matthew Koehler: 406.542.7343

HAMILTON, MONTANA - On Thursday afternoon Bitterroot National Forest officials used armed guards to prevent local citizens from attending a press conference at the Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor's Office in Hamilton, Montana regarding the release of the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project, Montana's first Healthy Forest Restoration Act Project.

Jim Miller, 53, of Hamilton, MT and president of Friends of the Bitterroot - a local conservation organization with 670 members in the surrounding area - was escorted out of the public Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor's office by an armed guard in a bullet-proof vest just prior to the Thursday afternoon press conference announcing the much-anticipated release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS).

Also locked out of the public Bitterroot National Forest office were local Darby, Montana residents Steward Brandborg and Larry Campbell.

According to Mr. Brandborg, 80, a former Forest Service wildlife biologist and longtime Darby, Montana resident whose father was the Supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest from 1935 to 1955, the Bitterroot National Forest had hand-selected those who could attend the press conference in this public building, only allowing individuals who supported the Bitterroot National Forest's unpopular and controversial proposal to log thousands of acres of old-growth forests in prime elk and bighorn sheep habitat as part of Montana's first Healthy Forest Restoration Act project.

Larry Campbell, 57, a former geologist and carpenter who actually lives closer to the project area than most of the people hand-selected by the Bitterroot National Forest and allowed into the public building, believes that using armed guards to escort public citizens out of the public office of the Bitterroot National Forest is similar to the type of "manufactured consent" seen at most of President Bush's political rallies.

Ironically, back in 2001 it was Mr. Campbell who was at the receiving end of a assault in the parking lot of this very same Forest Service office. As he emerged from inside the office after picking up some public documents, Mr. Campbell was assaulted, spit on and threatened by a band of a dozen violent loggers right in the parking lot of the Bitterroot Supervisor's office in Hamilton.

According to Mr. Campbell, Bitterroot National Forest officials did absolutely nothing about the assault and made no attempts to come to his rescue, but instead simply sat inside the office and peered out the window as the assault took place.

Of the 10,000 plus public comments that the Forest Service received as part of this first Healthy Forest Restoration Act project in all of the Northern Region, 98% were opposed to the Forest Service's old-growth logging alternative (Alt 2), and instead favored a plan put forth by a local forest protection groups, foresters and restoration workers to effectively reduce fuels on 1,600 acres of the forest within a 1/4 mile of homes and with pre-commercial thinning in pine plantations, while protecting important wildlife habitat and old-growth forests. This plan is Alternative 3 in the FEIS.

In other developments, information obtained this week from the Bitterroot National Forest via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Native Forest Network reveals that between April 20 and August 15, 2005 the Forest Service spent $161,940 in taxpayer money marking old-growth logging units as part of the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction project - Montana's first Healthy Forest Restoration Act project - during the public comment period and prior to any official decision.

"The pre-decisional expenditure of $162,000 in taxpayer funds to mark the logging units for the Forest Service's old-growth logging alternative shows explicitly that the so-called 'collaborative' efforts and public process for the Middle East Fork timber sale were simply a grand charade," explained Mr. Campbell. "Such governmental deception does a huge disservice to genuine democratic process. Governmental toying with the public creates cynicism and acts to poison civic participation."

For more details on this project, including photos and videos, visit: http://www.nativeforest.org/middle_east_fork.htm.

The Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor's Office can be contacted regarding this project at 406.363.7100 or download the Final Environmental Impact Statement document at: http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/bitterroot/planning/decisiondocs/mef_final.htm.
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Thursday, September 22, 2005

Statement from Matthew Koehler, Director of the Native Forest Network Regarding Today's Release of the Bitterroot National Forest's Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project Final Environmental Impact Statement - Montana's First Healthy Forest Restoration Act Project

For more information: 406.542.7343

"The public needs to understand that at nearly every step of the way Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Dave Bull and some of his staff have been uncooperative to the point of disbelief and have done nearly everything in their power to obstruct the public from finding common-ground and consensus. This has been an incredibly eye-opening and frustrating experience."

"The Native Forest Network, including our staff forester and staff ecologist, have invested nearly 2,000 hours of our time trying to work with the Forest Service on this project to help develop a common-sense alternative that would provide the most effective and efficient community wildlfire protection, while at the same time protecting and restoring the old-growth forests in the area that are home to elk, bighorn sheep, moose, wolves, bear and goshawk."

"Unlike the Forest Service, who knowingly never invited the Native Forest Network or other interested citizens to any of the collaborative public meetings, we have spent the last 10 months educating the public by hosting public meetings in Sula, Hamilton and Montana and public panels with some of the nation's leading PhD scientists from the University of Montana's School of Forestry. Through a dozen public field trips that we organized, we have taken hundreds of people into the woods to get on-the-ground look at this project. It's interesting to note that meanwhile the Bitterroot National Forest hasn't held one single public field trip about this project."

"In addition to opposition expressed by 98% of the people who participated in the public comment period, Bitterroot officials also know that Ph.D. scientists with expertise in entomology, soils, fire and fuels, forest ecology, aquatics, fisheries and wildlife are concerned with, or opposed to, this project - including a number of prominent Ph.D. faculty members at the University of Montana's School of Forestry and Conservation."

"Let's not forget that approximately 10,000 people, about 98% of citizens who participated in the public comment period, supported the common-sense community wildfire protection work on 1,600 acres as contained in Alternative 3. However, it appears as if the Forest Service never had an intention of seriously considering this common-sense approach since our FOIA earlier this week revealed that they have spent over $160,000 in taxpayer money during the public comment marking pockets of old-growth forests to be logged as part of this 'healthy forest' project."

BACKGROUND: On December 3, 2003 President Bush signed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) into law. The first HFRA project in Montana and the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Region is called the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction project, in the Bitterroot National Forest (BNF), along the East Fork of the Bitterroot River. According to BNF officials, the goal of this project is to protect the East Fork community near Sula from wildfire and "restore" the forests within the East Fork area."

While forest protection groups support these goals the truth of the matter is that the BNF's preferred Alternative 2 would mix a small amount of bona-fide community protection work with industrial logging of 4,000 acres of unlogged, old-growth forests, home to elk, bighorn sheep, moose, bear, wolves, coyote, threatened bull trout, cutthroat trout, goshawk, martin, pileated woodpecker and flammulated owl.

In response to the harmful parts of the Forest Service's proposal, local forest protection groups - together with foresters, firefighters, restoration practitioners, hunters and others - developed a superior community wildfire protection plan that truly protects and restores old-growth forests called the Community Protection and Local Economy Alternative (Alternative 3).

Unfortunately, Bitterroot Supervisor Bull decided to arbitrarily eliminate the watershed and road restoration components from Alt. 3, claiming that the HFRA doesn't allow restoration work that isn't tied to logging.

These restoration activities would have provided hundreds of local jobs restoring forest health in the East Fork drainage and, according to the best available science, watershed and road restoration work is an integral part of restoring fire-adapted ecosystems, which is supposedly a primary objective of this project.

Local forest protection groups also wonder - if the Healthy Forest Restoration Act is truly about restoring healthy forests - how that goal is accomplished without bona-fide, ecologically-based restoration work.

For more details on this project, including photos and videos, visit: http://www.nativeforest.org/middle_east_fork.htm

The following PhD scientists (almost all of which are faculty members at the University of Montana School of Forestry) are familiar with the Middle East Fork project and the general scientific issues being debated as part of this project.

Diana Six, entomology (diana.six@cfc.umt.edu or 406-243-4473)
Diana L. Six, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Forest Entomology and Pathology in the Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences at the University of Montana. She currently has studies in progress on bark beetle ecology and management, and on the effects of invasive plants on native plant, arthropod, and vertebrate communities, and is involved in the National Fire and Fire Surrogate Study.

Tom DeLuca, soils science (tom.deluca@cfc.umt.edu or 406-243-4425)
Tom DeLuca, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of forest soils in the forestry department of the University of Montana. Dr. DeLuca's research addresses how fire and other natural and induced disturbances affect the biotic and physical characteristics of forest soils.

Stephen Siebert, forest ecology (siebert@forestry.umt.edu or 406-243-4661)
Stephen Siebert, Ph.D., is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of Montana. His teaching and research focus on the ecology and management of working landscapes. He enjoys practicing what he preaches on 40 acres of rich Douglas fir forests in western Washington where he is attempting to restore "old growth" forest structural conditions and species diversity through selective timber harvesting.

Jill M. Belsky, (belsky@forestry.umt.edu or (406) 243-4958)
Jill M. Belsky, Ph.D., is the director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests and Professor of Rural and Environmental Sociology at the University of Montana's College of Forestry and Conservation. Her teaching and research focus on the interactions between social and ecological change in rural areas overseas and in the U.S. West, and their implications for sustainable ecosystems and community-based and collaborative natural resource management.

Chris Frissell, aquatic ecology (hanfris@digisys.net or 406-883-1503)
Chris Frissell, Ph.D., is the Senior Staff Scientist at the Pacific Rivers Council and an affiliated faculty member at the University of Montana, Flathead Lake Biological Station. Dr. Frissell was one of eight authors of a review of post-fire logging (Beschta et al. 2004).

Joe Fox, entomologist and smokejumper (joefox@efn.org or 541-484-5102)
Joe Fox earned his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in forest entomology. His research has focused on bark beetles and exotic pathogens of conifers. Dr. Fox also has 23 years of wildland firefighting experience, 19 years as a smokejumper, and has a law degree from the University of Idaho College of Law.

Richard L. Hutto, Ornithology and Ecology (richard.hutto@umontana.edu or (406) 243-4292)
Richard L. Hutto, Ph.D., is Director of the Avian Science Center and Professor of Ornithology and Ecology at the University of Montana. His research interest is concerned primarily with understanding the ultimate factors that determine patterns of habitat use in birds.

Martin Nie, Natural Resource Policy (mnie@forestry.umt.edu or (406) 243-6795)
Martin Nie, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Natural Resource Policy at the University of Montana's College of Forestry and Conservation. His teaching responsibilities and research interests are in the areas of environmental and natural resources policy, law and administration, with a focus on public lands and wildlife.
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