Blackfeet wildland fire lawsuit not settled

A multi-million dollar lawsuit filed against the National Park Service by the Blackfeet Tribe promises to continue well into 2014.

The Tribe is seeking $60 million for damages caused by the 2006 Red Eagle Fire that started in Glacier National Park and spread eastward, burning 19,000 acres on the reservation.

Since the lawsuit was initially filed in June 2012, the parties have held several conference calls and another is scheduled for this month, but no resolution has come from the dispute, according to court documents.

The judge in the case has set a July 2014 deadline for both parties to fully present their case.

The Red Eagle Lake Fire started July 28, 2006 near Red Eagle Lake in the St. Mary drainage. Stoked by high winds and dry, beetle-killed fuels, the fire quickly spread outside the Park, forcing the temporary evacuation of the St. Mary town site. All told, the fire burned more than 32,000 acres.

“Had the United States performed reasonable fuel treatments and manipulations to Glacier National Park’s boundary lands, contiguous to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, the Red Eagle Fire would not have spread onto the Blackfeet Reservation and damaged the Tribe’s forest trust lands,” the plaintiffs claim.

The lawsuit also claims that federal funding for Indian forests is “substantially less than that available to adjacent state and private owners,” and that “hazardous fuels reduction on Indian forest remained lower than needed.”

The government responded to the lawsuit in November 2012, denying the allegations as well as claiming the Tribe filed its lawsuit too late and beyond the statute of limitations.

The backcountry region where the Red Eagle Fire started is managed by the National Park Service as wilderness, where logging and other mechanical management is generally not allowed, except cutting down the occasional hazard tree near a campground or clearing downed trees on trails.

Glacier Park has a fire management plan, completed in 2010, which allows for mechanical fuel treatments but only “according to cost effectiveness and impact to the resource.”

In the past, NPS has used prescribed, intentionally set, fires to manage some of its grassland habitat, particularly in the North Fork area at Big Prairie.