The American Forest Resource Council along with the Idaho Forest Group hosted a tour of the Redd Bull project on June 29.

Redd Bull is nearly 90,000 acres located south west of St. Regis, bordering the Dry, Little Joe, Two Mile and Ward Creek areas. The project is in the prescoping phase, and there have been several public meetings and previous tours of the area with recreational and other components suggested for the project.

Initial reports indicated that there might be an opportunity to treat up to 9,000 acres of the land mechanically.

“The reason we visited the sale again was to encourage the Forest Service to treat a larger footprint during this entry rather than have several smaller entries,” said AFRC communications director Asha Aiello.

Representatives from the Idaho Forest Group; Stimpson, Sun Mountain, Thompson River Lumber and Grayback Forestry attended the tour. Also attending were Mineral County commissioners, staffers from both Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester’s offices, members from the Mineral County Resource Coalition, and Forest Service supervisors and employees.

Treating more acreage

The Idaho Forest Group provided vehicles and lunch for the tour, “we really appreciate the great turnout from all of the interested parties,” said AFRC consultant Tom Partin.

As they toured the area, the groups discussed the possibility of treating more acreage to reduce fire risk as well as insect and disease outbreak, and also to ensure the sustainability of the forest products industry. Other treatment amenities would include improving habitat for deer and elk and to relocate roads that currently add sediment to streams. The project proposal would also help to fireproof homes located in the Wildland Urban Interface. Some members of the group also toured the Sunrise Fire salvage area, Smoked Trout.

In a previous interview, Partin said these tours were important. “We can look at it during the planning stages before it’s actually implemented. We would like to see this project treat a lot of acres, and this is a good template for moving forward on other projects,” he said.

The benefit of having all these agencies meet is that it gives the different type of groups the opportunity to have their input. For example, counties have the opportunity to receive more receipts back from their timber dollars. It also gives the Forest Service the chance to see how important the timber dollars are to the local communities.

AFRC works at the national level to get more funding from timber, and understands that it takes efforts from all levels to move projects like this forward.

“In the past the different groups did their own thing and provided their input on a case-by-case basis. When you bring everybody together and have a larger group, you have better momentum and it really presents a unified vision to the forest on how important forest management is and a variety of perspectives is very positive,” said AFRC President Travis Joseph during the Redd Bull tour last July.

Peeling back bureaucracy layers

The forest service is looking at this large landscape, and oftentimes they’ll come out with a scoping proposal. After that is when the various groups would get involved. But with this effort, it’s looked at even before scoping. There are hopes that this will help to peel back some layers of bureaucracy and give everybody more of a voice to what should happen, “the forest service is listening and providing some input back and we’re learning from them the rules and regulations they have to live with as well. So it’s really a two way street,” he said.

A serious issue that these projects face is litigation by environmental groups.

“We reach out to those groups and talk to them about the issues. But at the end of the day, they have tools at their disposal that we don’t have and that’s objections and litigation. So, if we can’t come to an agreement, it just takes one person to say “nope, this isn’t something that I can support” and we end up in the court room. And that’s really frustrating,” said Joseph.

Cooperation is what’s lacking right now, and Joseph points out that this isn’t a political but rather a community issue. “We should be able to work together because we have a lot of the same moral objectives,” he said.