Group Says Project Good for Ecosystem, Natural Resources, Safety and Local Economy
(Contact: Fred Clark @ fred57clark@gmail.com / phone @ 414.688.0582)
(Condon, MT) – In comments to a U.S. Forest Service proposal to log, treat vegetation and perform prescribed fires on public and private land southeast of Condon, Stewards of the Swan Valley, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the area’s community, culture and environment, supported the project and offered ways to improve the agency’s environmental assessment (EA) and planned measures.
The Swan Lake Ranger District of the Flathead National Forest (FNF) is proposing to treat vegetation and set prescribed fires to reduce fuel buildup in the wildland-urban (WUI) interface east of Highway 83 and about five miles southeast of Condon near Holland Lake. The 6,156-acre Rumbling Owl Fuels Reduction Project would include logging, road management and fuel reduction, and, according to the USFS, is designed to reduce wildfires and increase forest health in an area that contains many downed trees.
About three-quarters of the project area is in the WUI, the FNF says, and the proposal, whose comment period on the environmental assessment closed in late December 2024, would include logging on up to 4,005 acres and noncommercial vegetation treatments on up to 2,151 acres. Almost a quarter – 22 percent – of the project area includes private land, while the rest – 78 percent is public land (USFS).
Comments from the SOSV noted that the project is designed to meet many goals, including a primary goal of, over time, creating conditions that would allow for inevitable wildfire while protecting the resource values from wildfires’ adverse impacts.
“The current condition includes increasing risk to governmental and private infrastructure, ecosystem structure and function, and the local economy,” SOSV said in its formal comments to the proposed EA. “Reducing the risk and severity of uncontrolled wildfire reduces risk to residents, visitors, and others, while providing firefighters greater chance of success in fire suppression. A related goal is to improve forest health by enhancing the diversity of the forest composition throughout the project area.”
“Recreation use is a huge concern,” SOSV added. “Recreation uses continue to grow and new types of recreation are constantly being developed. This means that associated impacts to fire frequency, wildlife habitat and populations and other resources are increasing, which also affects the sense of place that is so important in this locale.”
SOSV supported Alternative B in the project proposal’s EA because it’s “good for the ecosystems and natural resource resiliency, good for increased safety, and good for the local economy.”
Writing for SOSV, Fred Clark, a retired USFS employee, raised some specific questions and concerns to help improve the project and to protect the area, ecosystem, economy, wildlife and fisheries in line with the nonprofit organization’s mission.
SOSV said the EA should:
More clearly indicate the specific roads that would be obliterated and restored to a natural state
Ensure that Forest Service roads used as log-haul routes (about 41 miles) remain in good condition to protect public safety, private ingress and egress, and the environment. (SOSV noted that keeping roads in good condition is essential to reduce the concentration of subsurface and surface water runoff, minimize road-surface erosion, filter ditch water before entering streams and cut the risk of culvert failures during peak runoff events.)
Ensure that road planning, design and maintenance allows first responders to gain efficient access to private properties along and at the end of affected roads
Provide that the FNF manages roads for all uses – for instance, recreation access and use, forest management, property access, wildlife habitat, plant habitat, etc.
Specify the order of timing of so-called commercial treatments in the list of project activities. (Commercial treatments include those operations that provide for the sale of timber for commercial purposes.)
Prompt the Forest Service to contact private landowners whose properties (240 acres) lie within the project boundary. As the FNF’s project EA notes, in many cases, these small private forested areas are not managed, stocked densely with vegetation and contain large quantities of dead trees. These private land holdings are highly vulnerable to both insect and disease outbreaks and wildland fire. SOSV suggested that the FNF contact landowners to determine if they are interested in a federal law – the “Wyden Agreement” – that “allows the Forest Service to enter into cooperative agreements with willing partners and landowners for the protection, restoration and enhancement of fish and wildlife habitat and other resources on non-Forest Service lands.”
Make certain that FNF rigorously advertises – and communicates with organizations and information outlets – prescribed burns well in advance of burning, along with information about expected duration and expectations of smoke levels as they may affect air quality in the Swan Valley. “Too often we see firefighters show up at prescribed burns because of lack of prior communication,” SOSV wrote.
Ensure that the USFS closely cooperates with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other organizations – federal, state, local and others – to continuously monitor the ecosystem and to adjust treatments as necessary for water and aquatic species, including threatened bull trout. “We understand that the proposed actions will impact local streams and therefore aquatic habitat for many species, including Bull Trout,” SOSV wrote. “Best management practices are not always the best, but rather an approximation of desirable actions. Those practices must be modified on the basis of new knowledge or capabilities.”
Prompt the FNF to make sure that the heritage resource inventory is more than just a records search and that “ground truthing” identified sites should be completed and verified. “For example,” SOSV wrote, “we are aware of historic trails used by indigenous people from the Flathead valley to access the Swan Valley. It appears logical that an associated trail to access what is now the Bob Marshall Wilderness from the Swan Valley could occur in the project area, especially in the area around Holland Lake and the current pack trails on either side of the lake.”
Precisely detail the project’s potential value to the area economy: “The EA does not address overall economic impact to the local economy of the Swan Valley and associated region. This analysis therefore makes little sense to the people who live, work and play here. The real question of economic effects to people in the Swan Valley and Seeley Lake is brought up in the Environmental Justice portion of the EA, but even that does not give readers an idea of what the effects will be on the local economic situation.”
Provide details, through a public presentation, on what the Rumbling Owl project’s proposed land management activities would have on the visual landscape. “That said, we hope that the long term visual effects will be positive even though the short and midrange effects to the viewshed will be disruptive.”
Address the impacts of noise from roadwork, logging operations or anything else in the project. “Impacts on wildlife, local residents, and visitors could be substantial in specific places during relatively short periods of time, and across larger landscapes for longer periods. That should be disclosed in the Environmental Assessment.”
(Note: Fred Clark, vice president of Stewards of the Swan Valley, worked for the U.S. Forest Service for 30 years as an archaeologist, tribal liaison, social scientist, advisory council coordinator, and senior agency leader. Clark worked directly in National Environmental Policy Act planning and project implementation at the forest, regional, and national levels, including having helped 15 national forests complete their forest plan revisions and having a significant role in developing USFS Planning Rules. Clark recently retired as national director of the Office of Tribal Relations at the Washington, D.C., office.)
Stewards of the Swan Valley is a charitable 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the community, culture, and environment in the Swan Valley and adjacent areas in western Montana. Our mission is to reflect local community values while facilitating efforts that sustain, enhance, conserve, and protect the natural and cultural resources and rural lifestyle of the Swan Valley for present and future generations.
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