BLM Considering 13,000 Acre Purchase in Blackfoot

[BigHornRam]

Need glasses?

The public should see both sides of what they're buying, not a cherry picked photo showing balsam root covered south slopes and cut over low-mid elevation DF stands.

They're getting a lot of weed problems, road problems, sediment problems, under-stocked clear-cuts, over-stocked clear-cuts, cut over sub-alpine type stuff that wasn't slashed properly...just to name a few of the potential management challenges the BLM/public is going to get stuck with. All of which is subject to 80+ year stand rotations...best case. Not to mention terrible budgets that provide very little funding for management.

Sad Buzz how quick you are to point out bad forestry practices by the industry back in the 60s and 70s yet went out of your way to dismiss even worse forestry "work" conducted by your own agency in 2015 as demonstrated in this link.

Your Public Land

Some "quality" forestry work conducted on your National Forest lands. Forest Service has been informed and hopefully I can get some acceptable answers from them. Not holding my breath. Time for a big shake up in the USFS IMO.

www.hunttalk.com

 

[BuzzH]

Sad Buzz how quick you are to point out bad forestry practices by the industry back in the 60s and 70s yet went out of your way to dismiss even worse forestry "work" conducted by your own agency in 2015 as demonstrated in this link.

Your Public Land

Some "quality" forestry work conducted on your National Forest lands. Forest Service has been informed and hopefully I can get some acceptable answers from them. Not holding my breath. Time for a big shake up in the USFS IMO.

www.hunttalk.com

Wrong as usual. I well remember when all that country in Belmont Creek, Belmont Peak, Gold Peak, West Fork Gold Creek, Angel Creek, Game Ridge, Black Mountain was all logged. Same with Blanchard Creek, Woodchuck, Game ridge, Boles Creek, Placid...I remember when that was logged. Most all of it in the 80's-late 90's. The lower part of Gold Creek, Cow Creek, and very lower part of Belmont Creek were logged heavy as well as Sunflower Mountain...and a bit here and there in other places, in the 60's and 70's. To tell you the truth, some of that older logging left a lot more volume than what went on in the 80's-90's. I can show you a several hundred acre clear cut that not a single log left it, done in the late 80's. It was all chipped on site and hauled out in chip trucks.

Where I shot my first six point bull (located in the map you provided), there was an active sale going on in 1986. I asked the guy that bought the sale if he would move his machines off the road so I could get closer to get that bull out. They slicked a gigantic portion of that country around that time, and where I killed that bull is now clearcut. The logger, Jim Richards, was good enough to move his equipment at the end of the day, so I could get back in there. He was a super nice guy. I ran into him a couple times after that, and always talked to him when I saw him logging. Last time I talked to him was in about 1990, and two years later, I learned his wife, Becky, shot him in the back of the head with a .357 at the breakfast table. Apparently Jim and his brother had found out she had embezzled a bunch of money from their logging company. She tried to make it look like Jim committed suicide, but that didn't work out too well for her.

Take a tour on Google Earth and look at some photos from the 80's...much of that country was not significantly logged at all. A large portion of that country was logged mostly in the 80's, 90's, and even in the 2000's.

 

[BigHornRam]

Forests and Carbon

Thinning young forests can help them store carbon when mature.

www.nature.org

 

[bigskyblueman]

Make your comments soon.

Easy to use email link in the story to send comments to the Missoula office. Deadline is June 27.

BLM Plans To Acquire 13,000 Acres Near Missoula

13,000 acres of land in the lower Blackfoot watershed may become public.Tuesday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released an environmental assessment…

www.mtpr.org

Done...Thanks for the post...

 

[hossblur]

These things go into the weeds fast.
Anytime WE buy acres, it's a GOOD THING. Unless Buzz knows where they are creating more land.
Im always flabbergasted to hear FS/BLM employees. complain about how extraction or logging wasn't done properly. Seems like WE pay the FS/BLM to do a job. The logger has a financial motivator to make a job as profitable as possible. What is the FS/BLM reason for not doing their job? Laziness?
If good practices weren't followed, and the FS/BLM allowed it, then we need to hold the FS/BLM accountable.

But, anytime the public can acquire land, it should. Period.

 

[Mason326]

Mixed opinions on TNC, depends on where you are and who you deal with I'm sure. I'd rather our tax dollars go to buying more land into the system than blowing it like they normally do. I'd love if there was a concerted effort to buy small tracts to gain access where private is blocking access to big hunks of public lands like in CO, WY, MT, et cetera.

 

[BigHornRam]

Moving forward with more plans for additional purchases.

BLM to buy 13K acres in the lower Blackfoot

Public ownership of lands in the Lower Blackfoot River corridor are increasing incrementally, after the Bureau of Land Management signed paperwork this week to purchase 13,000 acres from The Nature

missoulian.com

 

[Trial153]

Yea, lets hope our newly appointed head of the BLM doesn't put the breaks on it......