Hogum project decision advances USFS toward goal of reducing fuel loading near communities

LINCOLN, Oct. 19 - This week, a final decision was signed for the Hogum project that will authorize the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest to conduct 2,451 acres of treatments, including prescribed burning, about nine miles east of the Lincoln community near Flesher Pass.

"This project is directly aligned with county, state, and federal goals of reducing fuel loading near communities," said Lincoln District Ranger Rob Gump. "I'd like to thank those in the community that worked collaboratively in developing the Hogum Wildfire Resiliency project. The project will help reduce wildfire risk to private landowners in the Hogum project area and does so while balancing habitat needs of wildlife in the area."

Insect outbreaks have created a high level of mortality in lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir stands in the Hogum project area. Successful wildfire suppression over the decades altered the natural fire cycle. These two separate actions have created current forest conditions that are conducive to high severity, landscape level wildfire events that can be difficult to suppress under summer fire season conditions. By removing fuel loads through harvests, regenerative harvests, and prescribed burning, the Hogum project will help restore and maintain the structure, function, composition and ecological connectivity of the forest system, increasing resiliency to future natural disturbance events like wildfire, insects and disease.