Flathead Forest moves to next phase in planning

There were loggers and snowmobilers, environmentalists and motorcyclists, biologists and backcountry horsemen, all in one room, all looking for a stake in the future of the Flathead National Forest.

Over the course of the next six months, these diverse groups will sit down together in collaborative meetings to craft their vision of a new Forest Plan. More than 100 people attended the first meeting.

The collaborative meetings are just the start of the planning process. After the groups finish their efforts in May, the plan will go through a regular environmental review process starting next fall, with public scoping and public comments. A draft environmental impact statement is expected by June 2015. If all goes according to schedule, the Flathead Forest will have a new plan completed by September 2016.

The collaboration effort holds no more weight than the traditional way of crafting an EIS, project team leader Joe Krueger said, but the idea now is to come up with creative solutions to problems and to build relationships among stakeholders.

“The collaborative process doesn’t trump anything,” Krueger told participants Nov. 5 at the Red Lion Inn in Kalispell.

How well the groups will work together remains to be seen. Already, plenty of land management decisions on the Flathead Forest have precedence in law, court settlements or both.

The Clinton Roadless Rule, for example, excludes more than 400,000 acres of the Forest from all but the most restrictive forms of logging. And even though grizzly bears could soon come off the Endangered Species List, most road restrictions put in place to secure their habitat will remain in place. There is also a long list of other considerations, from old growth and endangered lynx to streamside management zones and aviation airstrips.

Still, most people at last week’s meeting appeared willing to sit down at the table and work together. The Meridian Institute was hired to moderate the meetings. All told, the Flathead Forest has an additional $800,000 available annually over the next three years to complete the plan, but Forest Service staff working on the plan will also perform their normal duties.

The meetings will be open to the public. The first round, on Jan. 22, will focus on Forest-wide conditions and objectives across the Flathead Forest’s 2 million-plus acres. In March, participants will break up into smaller groups to work on plans for specific areas, like the Swan or the North Fork valleys.

The Forest will post links to documents and meeting times on its Web site, and the Meridian Institute plans to set up a discussion forum and its own Web site.

For more information, visit online at www.fs.usda.gov/flathead or www.facebook.com/discovertheflathead, call the Meridian Institute at 970-513-8340 or visit their Web site at http://merid.org/FNFplanrevision.