Lincoln District Ranger retiring Dec. 31

At the end of the year, Lincoln District Ranger Rob Gump will bid farewell to both Lincoln and his time with the U.S. Forest Service.

Gump will retire Dec. 31 after a year and a half in Lincoln and more than 38 years with the Forest Service.

"I didn't really come here with the idea I was going to retire at this moment. At the end of the day, life is kind of short," he said, noting that he's been eligible for retirement for a while.

Although he didn't go into detail about his reasons for retiring, Gump said he considered the decision over the summer and realized it made sense for him.

"Thirty-eight years, eight months and one day of service is what it calculated out to be, he said. "I thought I would hit 40 years. I didn't though. It's pretty personal as far as why; on the family side of things. It's nothing with the Forest at all."

"On behalf of the Forest Service I want to thank Rob for his dedicated service to the Forest Service, the lands we manage, and the communities we serve," Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Emily Platt "Rob led the Lincoln District through challenging times, including managing the constant change associated with a global pandemic."

Gump said he values the relationships he's been able to build in his time at the Lincoln Ranger District. "What Michael Stansberry had done building bridges into the community have been incredibly helpful for me. It enabled me to kind of start off in a good place."

As he prepares to leave, Gump said he likes the direction the Forest is going, but regrets he'll be leaving unfinished some of the things he worked to accomplish.

"Theres stuff I had in mind to do here and stuff I've been working with folks on, kind of in the background," he said. "Some of the cross boundary work with the Mannix Ranch we had going on. We're working on some agreements with some other large landowners.

One of the projects he was working toward is a fuels-reduction project that would work across boundaries to meet the goal of the now-defunct Stonewall Vegetation Project.

"We're taking the losses of Stonewall and trying to shape a new project called Lincoln Valley Fuels," he said. He's been working with some people to set the groundwork for what that project will be. "I'd like it not to be our traditional Forest Service project. Let's collaborate on it to talk about a bigger conversation about what needs to be done."

Gump sees the more holistic, cross-boundary collaboration between the Forest Service, landowners, the state and other federal agencies as the best bet for managing fire in the future.

"If we truly want to make a difference in how fire burns through this landscape, it needs to be more than just the National Forest," he said.

Gump plans to compile and pass along the ideas he has to Platt,

"That's the hard part," he said of his decision to retire. "I came here to do some of those kinds of things. I'm not necessarily leaving 100 percent satisfied that I've done what I wanted to do. Honestly, I'm not, but you kind of have to look at yourself and what makes the most sense on a personal level."

Zach Muse, chairman of the Upper Blackfoot Valley Community Council and Lincoln's fire chief noted Gump's pending retirement at the Dec. 2 Government Day meeting. From his perspective, Gump's retirement means the Lincoln Ranger District is losing a great asset for getting work done on the ground.

"Finally we're sitting better than this district probably has ever sat, with Emily as the forest supervisor and Rob as the ranger," he said. "They're two people who want to get work done on the ground."

Like Gump, Muse hopes the fire mitigation and land management projects that have been in development will carry on under the new ranger.

Although he'll be retired, Gump still has plans to put his knowledge of wildfire to work.

"I've always been pretty active in the fire world. I'll be teaching some fire classes, some incident command system classes. There's an international group I started getting involved with, Montana folks who teach."

He said he's got the qualification that could also allow him to help the Forest Service with some of the more complex prescribed burning they have planned. "I don't know how that will play out. If they want me to come back and help out I will. I'm not leaving Montana."

Gump said he has a daughter in Missoula and friends throughout western Montana but

plans to spend the first few months after he retires living in Kalispell.

"There's always that little bit of processing you do when you decide not to do something.

Am I ready? I don't know. But I'm going to do it. It's hard to close a chapter. I always think of it as a book. I'm going to start a new chapter."

Jarel Kurz, the Lincoln Ranger District fire amendment officer, will fill in as the interim ranger beginning Jan. 1. Gump said interviews for a new ranger took place last week, so he thinks it may not be too long before a new full time ranger comes in behind him.