For more information
contact:
Lolo National Forest
Post-Burn Project:
Timber Trumps Restoration
In the western United States the year 2000 will be remembered for the wildland fires, as many thousands of acres of land were affected during a dry summer season. Several wildland fires occurred in the Lolo National Forest in western Montana.
In 2001, the Forest Service proposed the "Post-Burn Project" and in 2002 released the "Post-Burn Draft Environmental Impact Statement" (DEIS) in response to the fires. The Forest Service’s preferred alternative would cut trees on nearly 5,000 acres (over 7 1/2 square miles), including roadless lands in a critical wildlife corridor between the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem and the Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem. Logging would occur on fragile post-burn landscapes that are already compromised from past mining, logging, and road building.
Contrary to the images often portrayed in the media, wildland fires, such as those in the Lolo National Forest, did not result in thousands of acres of blackened forest. In fact, the DEIS states, "A relatively large number of the fires that burned on the Lolo National Forest burned in a mosaic, at intensities and patterns that replicated historic (presettlement) fires."
The image above is a view in the Ninemile Creek area along Road 5498 in the Lolo National Forest. This area was "highgraded" (logged of most big trees) sometime around the 1960s. With few big and therefore fire resistant trees on this site, not many survived the fires of 2000. And because the trees on this site are not very big, the Forest Service has not proposed to log this area. However, as you will see, many areas appearing lightly burned and even naturally enhanced by the fires are now slated for logging.
The photographs you see in this series were taken on May 1, 2002 in the Ninemile Creek valley in the Lolo National Forest, when staff members of the Ecology Center and others visited the area. The Ninemile Creek watershed, along with others that would be affected by the Post-Burn Project, is home to rare and endangered mammals including the gray wolf and Canada lynx. It provides an important linkage zone between the grizzly bear population of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem and the proposed recovery area in the Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem, and in fact last year a grizzly bear took up residence in the Ninemile for the first time in decades.
The Ninemile and other streams in the Post-Burn Project Area also are home to the bull trout (a Threatened species under the Endangered Species Act) and the Sensitive westslope cutthroat trout. The Post-Burn DEIS states, "Bull trout and cutthroat trout in the Ninemile drainage subpopulations have been classified as ‘functioning at unacceptable risk’ and ‘functioning at risk’ respectively …based on habitat and population indicators over a large geographic scale…" The DEIS states of the Ninemile Creek watershed, "The relatively high road densities …indicate past and ongoing activities that exert stress on the watersheds and fish populations. Post-Burn fish sampling data suggest that there are few, if any, remaining population strongholds in this drainage."
Postfire logging in these sensitive areas will further increase sediment loads to bull trout streams, fragment wildlife habitat, and disrupt natural ecological processes. This will add to the ongoing stress on these streams caused by sediment from the excessive road network.
Next PageWrite the Forest Service regarding the Post-Burn Project