The Kootenai National Forest advocated the 95,412-acre Black Ram Project will curtail fire risk in the wildland-urban interface and restore historic forest conditions by logging the most fire-resistant and resilient old growth forests, 12 miles from the nearest home, along the headwaters of the Yaak River. Forester Herb Hammond explained that some of the spruce-subalpine fir old growth in the project area is 600-800 years old and has no indications of previous harvest or wildfire creating a "unique habitat" that can "hold up to 80% more carbon than other forests," concluding they are "the precise forests that should be preserved and studied, not destroyed."
The finest way to battle wildfire in the wildland-urban interface is not a large-scale logging project penetrated into the wilderness of the Yaak but should be an endeavor to protect old growth forests across the landscape–their trees are more fire-resistant and they capture and store prodigious amounts of carbon; focus active forest management and treatment near homes and communities.
Only five percent of the West’s forests are considered old growth. The Three Rivers District Ranger Kristen Kaiser seems all but determined to blow up the Libby Dam so that the titanic, exploitative, avaricious, monopolistic, subsidized timber barons can destroy some of the last remaining old growth forest in the name of the visible hand of fire prevention. In Kaiser's mind there is too little logging and too much old growth forest in this country of ours.
The Kootenai National Forest and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have all but waved the white flag on the delicate Yaak grizzly bear population who calls the Black Ram Project area home. The National Environmental Policy Act states, "non-significant impact does not equal no impact. Thus, if an event has a less harmful alternative feasible, it ought to be considered." The U.S. Forest Service couldn't even be ruffled to conduct or write an Environmental Impact Statement or include a Biological Assessment that even mentioned the effects on the vulnerable 25 grizzly bears who live in the Yaak. In Kaiser's mind there is too little logging and too many grizzly bears in this country of ours.
Montana State Representative, Steve Gunderson of Libby, chortled, "the forest in the Black Ram Project is not pristine wilderness.” A misguided advertisement that fire has never existed in "pristine" wilderness, but logging, clear cuts and roads certainly do.
The Kootenai National Forest is like a timber baron of the 19th and 20th centuries, bringing to bear command over our country's natural resources and public trust without the public’s comment or injection, wrangling markets, rotting the federal government and its public land and environmental agencies, habitually defrauding and raiding the public of their investments, and holding sway over our paralyzed democracy. The Kootenai National Forest is like a horse that eats itself to death in a barn full of feed and cannot stop, and the public is left with the spoils of something that was and now isn’t.
Reader Comments(1)
MTPulp writes:
Is it irony that conservatives care nothing about conservation? This is your California governor, Montana. The stupidity of treating nature like this is robbing OUR future generations of the things we care about. We are in the second coming of the robber barons and Montana is being plundered. Go home Greg, you illegally-trapping carpet-bagging failure of a Montanan.
03/24/2021, 12:52 pm