KALISPELL - Heal the forest, clear the stream, kill the weeds
and build the trails. Pay the logger, help the wildlife, fight the
fire, save the mill.
"That's the way forward, is to look at our forests and our
communities at the landscape level," said Scott Brennan. "That's
the only way out of gridlock."
Brennan, who works with the Wilderness Society, has been meeting
lately with lumbermen and economic developers and U.S. Forest
Service officials, and together they've assembled an optimistic
plan for restoring both forests and local economies.
If successful, their proposal will bring in $90 million over the
next 10 years, an ambitious and unprecedented investment in woods
work, covering lands in the Blackfoot, Clearwater and Swan river
valleys.
It's possible, he said, because of a new federal initiative
focused on collaborative projects that restore overworked
ecosystems. The program - called the Forest Landscape Restoration
Act - provides $40 million a year for 10 projects around the
nation.
To qualify, the Forest Service must grant matching funds to the
projects, and Brennan and his coalition have asked for the max - $4
million a year over 10 years, plus $4 million in agency match, plus
an additional $10 million to cover agency overhead.
With that, he said, they would go to work on lands stretching
east from Potomac to Lincoln, up through the southern Bob Marshall
Wilderness complex, past Salmon Prairie nearly to Swan Lake, and
down the backbone of the Missions.
Along the way, they'd create more than 150 jobs, contributing an
estimated $9 million a year in direct labor income. They'd deliver
about 190 million board feet of sawlogs and biomass material, and
restore 46,000 acres of forest land. They'd beat back fire risk on
27,000 wooded acres close to homes, and restore about 1,000 miles
of streams.
They'd whack weeds on 81,000 acres, tread 280 miles of trails,
improve habitat for wildlife finned and furred.
If, that is, they can win the money.
***
"It's definitely going to be competitive," said
Rosalie Sheehy Cates, president of the Montana Community
Development Corp. in Missoula. Her group helps small businesses get
up and going, and has long recognized a connection between
sustainable forests and sustainable economies.
"Front and center is forest health," she said. "Everything else
revolves around that."
Leslie Weldon, Northern Region forester for the Forest Service,
nominated two projects for consideration under the new federal
program - one is based in Idaho, and the other, which labors under
the name Southwestern Crown of the Continent Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration Program, is focused on west-central
Montana.
"I think we have a real shot at it," said Gary Burnett,
executive director of the Blackfoot Challenge.
In fact, his group is one of the main reasons many think the
proposal might succeed. For years, the Blackfoot Challenge has
cobbled diverse coalitions to solve land use problems, bringing
conservationists and ranchers and big timber companies to the table
south of Seeley.
"It's a place where people have had a lot of practice with
collaboration," Brennan said. "It's actually the perfect place to
try this new approach."
In addition, the recent Montana Legacy Project has succeeded in
purchasing wide swaths of industrial timberland in the area,
turning much of it over to Forest Service control. That means
ecosystem restoration won't be hindered by multiple jurisdictions
and a checkerboard of private-public ownership.
"You couldn't pick a better place, if you want to try a more
landscape-level approach to managing forests," Sheehy Cates said.
The goals of the new federal plan are twofold, she said - to
require collaboration, and to emphasize restoration.
"Actually," she said, "it kind of formalizes the way we've been
doing things for years up here."
But it does more than just formalize process, Brennan said. It
also provides money to get the work done.
"That's the real difference," he said. "The more you work
together, and the more you can give the agency the funding it
needs, then the less likely it is that you'll have
controversy."
***
Some controversy, of course, is inevitable when
it comes to public land management, and Brennan was quick to add
that the proposal's specific projects would still need to go
through the usual environmental reviews. His hope, though, is that
the neighbor-to-neighbor work that's done on the front end - as
well as the focus on well-funded, science-based restoration - will
help to avoid much of the gridlock that has stalled other land use
plans.
Letters of support already have arrived from Montana senators
and county commissioners, from the Montana Logging Association and
the National Wildlife Federation, and from the Wilderness Society
and Pyramid Mountain Lumber, to name a few.
"It's incredibly broad-based," Sheehy Cates said. "That's what
makes it so appealing, is everyone's at this table.
Brennan said Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and agency
chief Tom Tidwell - who until last year was based in Missoula as
top boss of the Northern Region - could make their selections
before summer's end.
"We have been working for years in western Montana to unite the
goals of forest health and local livelihoods," Sheehy Cates said.
"This proposal funds the work that accomplishes both.
"This is the future of forest management on federal lands."
Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at (406) 862-0324 or at
mjamison@missoulian.com.