At the last commissioners meeting regarding county forest management, Mineral County Resource Advisory Group member Angelo Ververis asked what needed to be done in order to make local forest service projects such as Cedar Thom a priority – even suggesting that the county had to become “the loudest voice” in the room in order to get projects going.

On Monday Sept. 30, in a crowded county commissioners conference room, it appeared that Ververis was correct in his assumption and that through pushing for meetings with the leadership of both the USFS and Fish and Wildlife Services the county became the loudest voice, a voice that demanded action.

“We have talked about working through challenges where we need to be working ahead of the game on some of these restoration projects,” Faye Krueger, Regional Forester for the Northern Region, said. “Specifically, what I have done on the Cedar Thom proposal is that I have identified that as a high priority that we work with Fish and Wildlife Service on in order to get it through the consultation process.”

Krueger added that consultation on the Cedar Thom project would be done at the end of the month and the bidding process would be opened at the end of December.

“It would have to go through an objection process before it could be officially signed,” Krueger said. “We are moving from an appeal process to an objection process.”

The objection process was clarified as a new means for the tail end of projects within the forest service and involves interested parties stating their objection to a proposed project decision and also giving a decision rather than simply appealing and keeping the project stalled.

Commissioner Roman Zylawy then asked Krueger why the area within the Cedar Thom project was classified as a bull trout habitat when the creek dries up for a significant amount of time during the summer months.

“It’s a naturally occurring dried stream and the fish have adapted to that,” Debbie Austin said.

In strategy meetings prior to the Krueger meeting, it was suggested that the commissioners take the lead on questions and the Monday meeting saw the commissioners do just that.

Commissioner Duane Simons asked the next question to Krueger – asking why the Cedar Thom project was previously placed below other projects on the list of priority projects for the undermanned Fish and Wildlife Service to complete analysis on.

“We polled all of the forests for their top priorities and we worked with the fish and wildlife service and presented those priorities,” Krueger said. “When Debbie told me about the importance of the Cedar Thom we immediately moved it forward. We did that (prioritized) by looking at things from a state level and looking at the issues made us move it up to a top priority.”

Upon the completion of Krueger’s statement, Ververis asked Krueger why it took having meetings to push the project forward on the priority list of the USFS.

“This project has been going on for three years now,” Ververis said. “Why wasn’t it prioritized at a high level before?”

“We just met with Jodi (Bush of FWS) and talked about what our priority is to get these projects moving forward,” Krueger said. “We just got our top priority completed, which was the Idaho panhandle and Kootenai National Forest revision and so we then brought Cedar Thom up based on the recommendations of the forest supervisors and the importance of this one we have it higher on the list for consultation (with FWS).”

Krueger added that the USFS “hasn’t stalled” or stopped working on the Cedar Thom, but the forest service wants to prioritize projects that are “ready to go” and have the FWS consult on them.

“I’m a little concerned because it has taken so long before it’s reached the point where it is even ready for review,” Ververis said. “There was so much back and forth that it has drug out this long and before you made it a priority it would have kept on dragging on.”

Krueger responded to Ververis’ line of reasoning by reiterating that the project was already on the way towards reaching the consultation phase with the FWS and as it reached closer to that point it became a priority.

The discussion then took a turn towards bigger picture issues with the current state of forest management in the county. Look for an article in next week’s Mineral Independent regarding this issue and the remainder of the meeting with USFS officials.