Willow Creek, Stonewall Project decision processes move ahead

Two vegetation management projects planned for the Lincoln Ranger District are moving forward after recently completing key steps in their respective decisional processes.

The Lincoln Ranger District completed consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the Willow Creek Vegetation Project last week, while the extended comment period on the re-vamped Stonewall Vegetation Management Project closed in mid-April.

Willow Creek

The Ranger District submitted biological assessments for the project to the USFWS in April 2018, but the response took longer than originally anticipated, due in part to the government shutdown in December and January.

The USFWS is the regulatory agency on threatened and endangered species in the area, including grizzlies, lynx and bull trout. Their concurrence on the project is just one step in the process, but it paves the way for a signed decision.

"Right now, we are working on getting the project record completed," said Jarel Kurz, acting District Ranger. Once that's done, they will be at the point where the decision can be signed, Kurz said they hope to see that by the end of May.

The Willow Creek Project in the Dalton Mountain area has been in the works since early 2017. It was developed using a categorical exclusion under the 2014 Farm Bill to address insect infestations by removing dead and dying trees from Forest Service lands.

"It's set up with pre-commercial thinning, commercial thinning, a whole suite of different harvest including prescribed burning, specifically dealing with the insect and disease issues on Forest Service lands," Kurz said.

The Willow Creek Project is expected to produce about 15 million board feet of timber.

Once the decision is signed, the district will develop the timber sales. Kurz said they expect to be able to break the harvest into three sales, one of which will likely use the Good Neighbor Authority that allows the state to work with the Forest Service on forest restoration projects, including timber sales, on federal land.

"There is very marketable timber in there and we expect a fair amount of volume to come off of that and into the local economy," Kurz said.

Barring litigation that may delay or halt it, the Willow Creek Project will be the first vegetation management project to remove such a high volume of timber off the Lincoln Ranger District in more than 20 years.

Kurz said the district did a hazard tree timber sale in the Dalton-Ogden area in 2012 specific to roadside treatments, but to his recollection the last decision that involved a significant timber harvest on the larger landscape was a project in the Poorman Creek area in 1998.

Stonewall

The comment period on the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Stonewall Vegetation Project finally closed in April, following extensions due to the Government shutdown and later due to a website malfunction in mid-March that prevented people from accessing project documents.

The Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest released the new proposed alternative for the Stonewall Vegetation Project Dec. 1 after analyzing the effects of the Arrastra and Park Creek Fires of 2017, which burned more than 13,000 acres of the original project area.

Lincoln Ranger District personnel have been working on organizing the 278 pages of detailed comments they received on the revised plan for the vegetation management project.

"We have a heavy lift to address the amount of comments that came in from environmental groups," Kurz said. He said he hopes to have a time line for finishing that work in place by May 15.

After completing the responses to the substantive comments, the final supplemental EIS and a new draft record of decision will be published, followed by a 45-day objection period. If all goes well, Kurz said they hope to see a signed decision in September.

The original Stonewall Project had been in development since 2007 but was halted shortly before work was set to begin in 2017 due to a lawsuit brought by the Alliance for Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council.