SEELEY LAKE - The Forest Service held a virtual meeting Thursday, Oct. 15 to gather public input and describe the details of the Westside Bypass Wildfire Resiliency Project on the Seeley Lake Ranger District.
The project is located two miles north and northwest of Seeley Lake. Its intent is to improve forest health by addressing the future impacts of insects and diseases as well as mitigate hazardous fuel conditions that increase the potential severity of wildfires. The project proposes using commercial and non-commercial vegetation treatments on roughly 2,700 acres to reduce vegetation, ladder fuels and dead and down trees.
Project Silviculturist Andy Kies said the project’s desired forest conditions include vegetation being single story western larch and ponderosa pine stands. Stands would also be sparsely populated on a per acre basis. Ponderosas and larch would be retained due to their resistance to insects and adaptation to warmer and drier climates.
Ladder fuels, like tree limbs and understory layers, have the potential to allow surface fires to move upwards and become crown fires which are more difficult to manage by firefighters. Treating ladder fuels would involve cutting and piling understory trees with small diameters and burning them. Mechanical treatment would open the canopy layer to reduce the risk of a crown fire.
Dead and down trees are the result of insect outbreaks and disease. Invasive insects include mountain pine beetles and bark beetles which mostly affect lodgepole pines as well as western spruce budworms. Dwarf mistletoe is a parasitic plant and western gall rust is a fungal disease.
Within commercial harvesting units, dense vegetative pockets can be reduced through mulching, pile burning, jackpot burning and underburing. Mitigation would also support fire-resistant tree species like western larch and hardwoods.
Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) Forester Brad French said because of different stand conditions, one form of treatment does not work in all areas. They are broken up based on existing conditions.
Seeley Lake is in an impact zone which means air quality is monitored closely by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. As a result, the District will use a mix of mechanical and burning treatments for the project. Burning cannot occur if air quality is already poor and high-pressure weather events are expected to trap smoke in the valley.
The project is considered cross-boundary with its limits extending to state land in the north and west, Seeley Lake in the southeast and the Jocko Lakes fire boundary in the southwest. The Forest Service is using Good Neighbor Authority to apply for resources and get extra work done in areas outside the Missoula and Nine Mile Districts. Quinn Carver, Seeley Lake District Ranger, said the Good Neighbor Authority applies to the project because the treated area is in priority landscape for fuel treatment and is directly adjacent to DNRC grounds.
The proposed project falls within the new National Environmental Policy Act categorical exclusions, updated in 2018, provided under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. This means the project is set within the Wildland Urban Interface, treats less than 3,000 acres, is categorized under wildfire resiliency and does not involve constructing any new road systems.
During the public comment section of the meeting, one attendee asked how the project would affect the local whitetail deer population. Carver said whitetail deer populations would flourish under most of the treatments through the increase in forage like snowberry and huckleberries. There will be a reduction in cover however.
Another participant asked if private landowners would receive grant money to help remove small fuel sources. French said there is no grant money associated with the project analysis for private property mitigation at this time.
Carver said the project has been around for a while being included in the Southwestern Crown of the Continent collaborative effort in the last five or six years. He said they are pursuing it now because the project was originally supposed to follow Center Horse, but the 2017 Rice Ridge fire derailed several of the original aspects.
The timeline of the project will begin with public engagement and scoping in October and November. The scoping period has not yet begun but is expected to start in the next couple weeks. The decision memo will be signed in December. The planned project implementation is August 2021.
For more information on the project visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/lolo/landmanagement/projects/?cid=fseprd809383&width=full.
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