State plans several fire salvage sales

By CHRIS PETERSON - Hungry Horse News

The Glacier-View Hungry Horse Ranger District won’t try to salvage timber from lands burned by fire this summer, district Ranger Jimmy DeHerrera said recently. The state, however, is planning several sales on lands that burned in Northwest Montana.

All told, sales that amount to about 13 million board feet will come before the State Land Board in November, Dave Groeschl of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation said.

The state saw about 10,500 acres of land burn this summer. About 7,300 acres were timbered.

Locally, the closest state land comes from the Chippy Creek Fire. Three sales are planned there, two sales — of 3.4 million and 3.8 million board feet— are going before the State Land Board next month. A third sale of about 3 million more board feet is planned for Chippy Creek as well.

The Jocko Lakes Fire will see a sale of 4 million board feet go the Board this November and another 2 million board feet sale is on tap.

The logging on many sales will take place this winter.

In total, the state plans on salvaging about 19 to 20 million board feet of timber from fires that burned this summer, Groeschl said.

On the federal lands side, things move much slower.

The Skyland Fire burned about 45,800 acres total, but most of it wasn’t on the Flathead National Forest. Only about 3,500 acres burned on the Flathead. It burned Blackfeet tribal lands and Lewis and Clark National Forest lands as well.

In the Flathead portion, the land that burned was either inventoried roadless or was in core grizzly habitat, DeHerrera noted. As such it won’t be salvage logged.

The Felix Fire, which was on east side of the reservoir, has wilderness considerations and won’t be salvage logged either.

The Flathead is working on a salvage proposal for the Brush Creek Fire west of Kalispell, Bryan Donner of the Tally Lake Ranger District noted. The plans for that salvage are still being worked out as crews survey the burned areas, he said.

The plan, depending on its size and scope, could require an environmental assessment, which is generally a shorter environmental review process, or an full-blown environmental impact statement, which can take a year or more.

Salvage logging of fire-burned areas usually has to be done in a timely manner, depending on the species of wood. White wood species — like lodgepole pine, for example — have a tendency to check, or crack, soon after fire, which greatly reduces the value of the log.

Donner said the hope is to have a plan ready for public release in the coming weeks, at least by Christmas.

All told, area wildfires, not including the Jocko Lakes Fire, cost roughly $70 million to date from a federal standpoint and the state of Montana’s cost is roughly $42 million, but could rise to as much as $107 million, depending on reimbursements from the federal government.