Ripping Apart Montana Roadless Areas

[Forkyfinder]

Make the necessary roads for fire suppression. Then close them for hunting season…..I’ve not read all the comments, so if someone already said it, sorry for redundancy

What about the fact that most fires start next to a road?

 

[Straight Arrow]

Make the necessary roads for fire suppression.

How do you determine where the fire will be that needs to be suppressed?

 

[Eric Albus]

Ok, I’m convinced. Forget the roads.
Do nothing.

 

[sapperJ24]

Make the necessary roads for fire suppression. Then close them for hunting season…..I’ve not read all the comments, so if someone already said it, sorry for redundancy

Honest question, how do you propose paying for road building and road maintenance (clearing culverts, cutting brush, etc)?

I saw your later reply, but am genuinely interested in your thoughts. I would suggest increases in federal expenditures but I know many are opposed to that. And unfortunately for many areas, definitely including the fire mentioned earlier, due to the high volume of dead and down timber, timber sales don't come close to covering costs.

 

[sapperJ24]

We just experienced a wildfire first hand this summer, the Jericho MTN fire in SW Montana. It was just over a mile from my home. The reason that they were able to get it under control and stop it was because they have been doing fire management projects over the last few years, and that included new fire breaks, roads, and dead wood harvesting.

We put up with severe fire smoke hazards just about every year from fires in either Montana or Canada. The lack of the ability to build access roads to these fires and the accumulation of dead fall are a very real safety problems. This bill will allow the responsible agencies to better manage both. Anybody that doesn't believe that has not seen/experienced these fires nor the dead falls that are so common in our area.

The OP's initial post tells me that this is just a political issue for him. When he started this conversation by naming all the republican politicians that support this bill, then it's obvious that he is a sycophant for leftist ideology. I doubt if the OP actually cares about the issues that the bill addresses, this is just virtue signaling to politically active friends.

I'm using dated information here due to a quick search, so there's a possibility classification has changed. I will try to verify later, but please correct me if this outdated.

While the Jericho Mountain Fire started/burned in a roadless area, road building was permitted within that subclassification. However roads were never constructed. Why, I'm not sure but I would speculate that either the terrian didn't allow for easy (cheap) construction or the timber wasn't suitable (profitable) for harvest, or a combination of both.

The link below provides a map for roadless area classification:

Helena NF IRA

 

[Eric Albus]

Honest question, how do you propose paying for road building and road maintenance (clearing culverts, cutting brush, etc)?

I saw your later reply, but am genuinely interested in your thoughts. I would suggest increases in federal expenditures but I know many are opposed to that. And unfortunately for many areas, definitely including the fire mentioned earlier, due to the high volume of dead and down timber, timber sales don't come close to covering costs.

You’re right current timber sales don’t cover cost, so ramp up SELECTIVE logging, make our forests healthy, and cheapen up lumber costs. Get our saw mills back in production. We are in a housing crisis, and cost of building is thru the roof. Every extra 2x4, sheet of plywood, etc, cheapens up housing costs.

Use the resource to pay for fire suppression roads. Healthy forests provide habit. Many of our forests have become choked out and unhealthy. Filled with pine beetle killed trees, and few to no elk/deer.

 

[sapperJ24]

You’re right current timber sales don’t cover cost, so ramp up SELECTIVE logging, make our forests healthy, and cheapen up lumber costs. Get our saw mills back in production. We are in a housing crisis, and cost of building is thru the roof. Every extra 2x4, sheet of plywood, etc, cheapens up housing costs.

Use the resource to pay for fire suppression roads. Healthy forests provide habit. Many of our forests have become choked out and unhealthy. Filled with pine beetle killed trees, and few to no elk/deer.

Appreciate the response here. I agree that parts of many forests are in undesirable conditions and that we are undeniably in a housing crisis.

With selective sales, would the proceeds stay with the region or to be used anywhere in the nation? Proceeds used to stay more local, but recently have been pulled back. I think congress would need to amend the KV law to build roads outside the project area. A longer term concern with large scale selective sales is sustainability and trying to avoid a boom/bust cycle.

I think you've touched on one of the reoccurring concerns discussed thus far, more roads result in more habitat fragmentation which may ultimately defeat the stated goal of improved habitat with increasingly managed and fire suppressed forests.

 

[Forkyfinder]

You’re right current timber sales don’t cover cost, so ramp up SELECTIVE logging, make our forests healthy, and cheapen up lumber costs. Get our saw mills back in production. We are in a housing crisis, and cost of building is thru the roof. Every extra 2x4, sheet of plywood, etc, cheapens up housing costs.

Use the resource to pay for fire suppression roads. Healthy forests provide habit. Many of our forests have become choked out and unhealthy. Filled with pine beetle killed trees, and few to no elk/deer.

I dont disagree - i just dont understand.

It wasnt lack of available timber that drove pyramid out of business.

Putting more timber up for sale wont make mountain town living affordable again - and thats a big part of why the economics are too broken for those jobs and people to move there.

 

[Treeshark]

Agreed that it’s not a supply/access issue.

I suspect that the only thing that might revitalize timber production in that area would involve an even further tariff/embargo escalation with Canada.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Do nothing.

Your frustrated sarcasm is not lost. However, more roads everywhere is not even a viable idea.

Measures to mitigate wildfires in the urban-wildland interface areas, particularly in populated places are viable, practical, and are being implemented today. But those places are too numerous, are expanding, and are difficult to judge anymore, with respect to forecasting fires. Plus the monster in the room is the lack of funding at every level.

Example: If you spent the gazillions of dollars to punch and maintain fire suppression roads up every drainage in the Gallatin and Madison mountain ranges, Mother Nature would laugh at you as the big fires would ignite in the Tobacco Root Mountains drainages.

 

[Forkyfinder]

I suspect that the only thing that might revitalize timber production in that area would involve an even further tariff/embargo escalation with Canada.

ive got hope for ai and robots

That - or grazing fees could be raised enough that the USFS pays to log areas.

 

[Flynarrow]

Ok, back from some bird hunting.....so I was the original poster on this thread. My background is both western state education and a career in natural resource management....final decade of career as responsible for 330,000 acres of public land. Fairly familiar with forest management issues, fiscal reality and experience with prescribed and wildfire.

Most of the Roadless Areas are in the West, and mostly are in fire dependent ecosystems. Using wildfire suppression and timber supply as reasons to remove Roadless Area designation have a few weaknesses. First, the remaining Roadless areas generally are the most undesirable to log.....that's why they weren't logged previously. The best timber on the easiest lands were logged long ago. Generally steep, rocky and/or poor timber quality. Second, roading these areas is expensive...a GAO 1977 report put average logging road at $19,000 per mile...inflation from 1977 to 2025 is 435% so approximately $80,000 per mile in 2025. And they require maintenance....the USFS has a 8 billion dollar backlog in maintaining the 368,000 miles of USFS road. Third, these fire dependent ecosystems needs fire to be healthy. Beetle killed downfall are not viable as lumber, are now often several feet deep and lack of seral vegetation and openings are not favorable to many wildlife species. Suppressing fires just builds more fuel so fires are hotter and larger when they do burn....and they will burn. Prescribed fires can be successful at a small scale, but are very expensive and take a lot of manpower, have narrow timing windows, incur risk, and can generate smoke that many Westerners find undesirable. They are best in light fuels and most appropriate in wildland urban interface....not backcountry Roadless areas.

So in western Montana where I live, most timber mills have shut down. It would take over $10,000,000 to establish a new mill. A prudent investor wouldn't invest that kind of money without an assured timber supply and a steady demand with a cost competitive supply. Frankly, the best western Montana timber was logged long ago. Today West Coast second growth timber and timber in the South is much more competitive costwise.

The remaining mills I am familiar with are not starving for supply of trees.....but have higher labor costs, housing issues and a competitive market. BTW, the average cost framing wood of a new house is 6.5 to 8% of the total cost of the house. So a bit cheaper wood wouldn't do a lot to lower housing costs.

As others have mentioned, reducing staff and funding of natural resource agencies is contrary to increasing wood supply or land management in general. Creation of the National Fire Service (led by Sen Tim Sheehy) and taking the fire budget will further deplete natural resource agencies. Many resource employees were/are partially funded by thier time in fire related activities.

 

[El Jason]

Sycophant…

 

[SAJ-99]

Seems the discussion needs to start with increasing uses of the small and diseased logs in something like CLT in building materials.

 

[Treeshark]

Seems the discussion needs to start with increasing uses of the small and diseased logs in something like CLT in building materials.

Not sure if the supply over there was ever significantly connected, but the implosion of the paper industry has impacted that locally here quite a bit.