Project would involve 23.7 million board feet of timber

The Daily Inter Lake

The largest timber sale in the Swan Valley in recent years is poised for approval - a state project that will involve logging in old growth and new roads, mainly to meet a mandated annual timber target.

A state study analyzes several approaches to the project, but Daniel Roberson, unit manager for the Swan Lake State Forest, announced that he intends to select an alternative that will involve harvesting 23.7 million board feet of timber during three years from 1,884 acres, including about 1,221 acres currently classified as old-growth forest.

The project also would involve sediment-reducing improvements for 47 miles of existing forest roads, plus building 19 miles of new road.

In a letter announcing the preferred alternative, Roberson said the project "was designed to address Swan River State Forest's primary commitment to Montana's mandated timber harvest levels over a three-year period."

In November 2004, the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation completed a required recalculation of the "sustained yield" of timber that could be harvested from the state's school trust lands. The annual sustained yield, generated through computer modeling, was increased statewide from 45 million board feet to 53.2 million board feet.

The Swan Lake State Forest's share of the statewide target increased to 6.7 million board feet annually.

"This resulted in an increase in the potential harvest under this project," which was in a draft planning stage in 2004, according to the environmental study's executive summary.

The project also is aimed at addressing insect and disease infestations in harvest areas, and changing forest stand characteristics to conditions that existed prior to aggressive fire-suppression efforts. The study projects a significant reduction in sediment loading in Lost Creek, Cilly Creek and Soup Creek as a result of road improvements.

Those improvements include removing five bridges and stabilizing nearby streambanks, plus relocating a section of the South Fork of Lost Creek Road farther from Lost Creek.

Roberson's preferred alternative would generate income of $9.7 million, with about $3.4 million going to state school trust funds.

The project is bound to meet resistance from Friends of the Wild Swan, a group that has objected for years - often through lawsuits - to most major timber sales in the Swan Valley. The group submitted

lengthy comments to the state with a laundry list of objections.

The group's spokeswoman, Arlene Montgomery, said the Three Creeks Project is the biggest timber sale she has seen in the Swan Valley since she started reviewing timber projects in the early 1990s. It easily exceeds the previous volume leader, the 14 million-board-foot Goat-Squeezer project.

Montgomery questions whether the state is adequately assessing the collective impacts from trying to complete such a large project in three years. The Three Creeks project must be completed in three years under a multi-agency grizzly bear conservation agreement that allows forest management activities in defined bear management units on rotating intervals.

Road work and timber harvesting on a scale not recently seen are being squeezed into the three-year period as a "direct result of having to meet a timber target," Montgomery said. "I don't think it has anything to do with sustainable yield or maintaining biological diversity."

Her group also raises a variety of concerns about claims in the environmental study about old-growth timber harvest.

The study says that of the 1,222 acres of old growth where there would be timber harvest, 658 acres would "continue to be classified as old growth" once harvesting is complete. That's because varying methods of tree harvesting would be applied, with more trees left on some acres than others.

But Montgomery asserts that it is an "informed guess, at best" that old growth areas can be "manipulated and still function as old growth" in terms of how the areas are used by wildlife.

The state's official response is that once timber harvesting is complete, the 658 acres would meet a definition for old growth that has been adopted by the state and other land management agencies.

Roberson's preferred alternative is not the most aggressive alternative, in terms of road building and timber volumes, among those that were considered.

Another alternative called for logging 25.8 million board feet from 1,970 acres, including 1,114 acres that are considered old growth.

Roberson expects to announce his final decision with a selected alternative on Jan. 2. After that, the sale goes to the state Land Board for consideration.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com