Botello talks a wide range of issues facing Flathead Forest

Anthony Botello recently had a good look at the Flathead National Forest. Many would say the best part of the Forest.Last month he floated down the South Fork of the Flathead River from Big Prairie to Meadow Creek with staffers in the heart of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. It was a sort of homecoming for Botello. In 1993 he worked on the Spotted Bear District in a Forest Service exchange, where some staff went to the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho, where Botello was normally stationed, and he and other firefighters went to the Bob.

“It’s a gorgeous landscape,” Botello said in an interview earlier this month.

Botello has been on the job as the new Flathead National Forest Supervisor for about six months now.

Botello began his Forest Service career in 1988 on the Sierra National Forest. He spent the majority of his 35-year tenure with the Forest Service in central Idaho, and has also held positions in California, Oregon, Utah and Montana. He has been in leadership roles for almost half of his career.

He started as a wilderness ranger and soon became a backcountry animal packer on the Rogue River National Forest. He was a snow ranger and permit administrator that led to being a part of a Forest Service Incident Management Team that hosted the 2002 Olympic Winter Games at Snowbasin Resort in Utah. He also spent several years as an active firefighter, experienced sawyer, helicopter crew member and wildland fire crew boss.

Botello graduated from California State University, Chico with a degree in natural resources management – recreation management. He met his wife, Alexandra, while at Chico.

They finally found a home in the Flathead, he said, and have two grown children.

Botello said starting the Flathead National Forest supervisor position in the winter months helped him take time to meet staff and learn about the issues on the Forest.

There’s been some positive developments with staffing. He said the Forest Service is now hiring permanent seasonal staffers. While the jobs are still seasonal, employees don’t have to be re-hired every year and they get benefits.

This gives the employee, and the worker, stability, he explained. In the past seasonal employees often worked from season to season not knowing if they would get rehired the next year.

Botello himself worked nine years as a seasonal employee, he explained.

Botello has a full plate of projects this year. He said the Comprehensive River Management Plan is currently being worked on with a draft plan due out this fall, most likely in the October time frame.

The Forest Service recently hired a new new team leader, Mary Greenwood, who has experience with river management plans from across the nation. She hails from Forest Service Washington Office’s Wilderness, Wild and Scenic Rivers Program.

On the land management front, he said it was too soon to say how a recent federal court ruling concerning road management would impact the Forest.

Federal Judge Dana Christensen recently found that parts of the Forest’s 2018 plan concerning road management were in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“We just don’t know (how it will impact the Forest),” he said. “It’s ongoing litigation.”

The loss of Pyramid Lumber in the Swan Valley was also a concern.

“Anytime we lose an industry partner we feel it,” he said.

With the closure of the Pyramid mill, there are just two large mills left in the area – F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber and Weyerhaeuser.

Botello said it was important for the Forest Service to put up sales in the Swan Valley that were large enough to make it economical for mills in the Flathead to harvest the wood.

Locally, several decks of wood from last year’s wildfires have been sold. About a half million board feet of decked logs from the Tin Soldier Fire complex along the Hungry Horse Reservoir were sold.

The Forest is on track to sell about 47 million board feet of timber this year.

On the subject of the Holland Lake Lodge, he said the Forest supports a lodge there.

“I want to normalize recreation at Holland Lake again,” he said.

Having said that, he acknowledged there are problems with the septic system at the lodge. It is also up for sale by owner Christian Wohlfeil. The previous prospective buyer, POWDR out of Utah is no longer in the picture.

POWDR was proposing a major expansion of the lodge, which was vociferously opposed by many folks. Holland Lake sits on the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

As far as a tram on Columbia Mountain just outside of Columbia Falls, he has heard nothing more of it and has spent “no time thinking about it or considering it,” he said.

He said the Forest Service camp at the gravel bar at Blankenship would be addressed as part of the Comprehensive River Management Plan, though the Forest Service was looking at ways to provide an opportunity for recreation at the site, while addressing human waste and trash concerns. He noted the Forest Service and Flathead County were working on a plan to shore up erosion at the bridge.

The plan is to use root balls from trees and implant them in the bank upstream from the bridge to control erosion, Flathead County. 

Botello said he’s also met the Glacier National Park superintendent David Roemer, primarily to talk about the river plan.

“We have a good relationship,” he said.