Flathead forest plan deadline nears

By JIM MANN

Comment period ends Aug. 7

The Daily Inter Lake

A deadline for public comments on long-range forest plans for the Flathead, Lolo and Bitterroot national forests is looming in less than two weeks, and the Forest Service has received only about 200 comments.

"That is pretty low," observed Chuck Sperry, who leads the Missoula-based planning team that has been developing the three forest plan proposals.

But Sperry said Tuesday he expects an increasing rush of comments as the Aug. 7 deadline approaches.

"Typically, we get a lot at the last minute," he said.

The three national forests are developing their plans under new rules that are sharply different from the guidelines used to develop forest plans across the country in the mid-1980s.

The proposed plans are slimmer and simpler, and they have been developed fairly rapidly compared with the 1980s plans, which involved voluminous environmental impact statements that in some cases took year to develop.

The proposed plans are billed as strategic documents that do not require environmental reviews; rather, each forest-management action taken to implement the plans will require environmental reviews.

The Flathead's proposed plan segregates the forest into parts for different uses and "desired conditions" for the future.

When the public comment period expires, final plans will be developed and released next spring, Sperry said. After that, there will be a 30-day "objection period" and only those who submitted comments have standing to submit formal objections.

"Basically, this is the last formal public comment period," Sperry said about the deadline.

Comments will be considered for revising the proposed plans. "We'll do the best we can to accommodate people's needs and concerns," Sperry said.

Of the roughly 200 comments received, most focus on major management issues.

"There's been a lot of attention paid to motorized vs. nonmotorized access, and wilderness recommendations and inventoried roadless areas, and another one that gets a fair bit of attention is timber suitability and timber sale programs," Sperry said.

Those are common issues to the Bitterroot, Flathead and Lolo national forests, but each forest has its own issues, he added. On the Bitterroot, for instance, there is considerable public comment on the forest plan's provisions regarding a proposed ski area on Lolo Peak, south of Missoula.

The Flathead's proposed plan includes 141,243 acres of "recommended wilderness," a substantial increase over the 90,000 acres of recommended wilderness in the forest's 1986 plan. Most of the additional acreage is from the inclusion of about 60,000 acres in the North Fork Flathead drainage around Thompson-Seton and Tuchuck mountains. The rest is accounted for with additions around the Bob Marshall, Spotted Bear and Great Bear wilderness areas.

The Flathead's proposed plan maps out 328,328 acres that are considered "suitable for timber production" and an additional 568,000 acres on which timber harvest is possible. But that translates to a dramatic reduction in timber harvesting that was prescribed in the Flathead's 1986 forest plan.

Forest officials are projecting - largely based on budget considerations - that about 25 million board-feet of timber will be harvested annually, compared with a ceiling of 50 million board-feet that was "allowable" but never reached under the 1986 forest plan.

More information about the forest plans is available on the Internet at http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/wmpz