News: Plan for Mont.'s Beaverhead-Deerlodge calls for large-scale stewardship contracts

	Plan for Mont.'s Beaverhead-Deerlodge calls for large-scale stewardship contracts APRIL REESE, LAND LETTER, 04/27/06 Dissatisfied with the Forest Service's draft management plan for Montana's Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, an ad-hoc group of local timber companies and environmental groups have come up with their own alternative that would make Beaverhead-Deerlodge the first national forest to use stewardship contracts on a large scale. The agreement, dubbed the "partnership strategy," calls for significantly boosting both the forest's timber base and its recommended wilderness. Specifically, the plan would set aside 573,000 acres as proposed wilderness, more than twice the acreage recommended in the Forest Service's preferred alternative in its draft plan. The partnership strategy would also set aside 713,000 acres as "suitable" for timber harvesting -- more than three times the acreage in the Forest Service's plan. The industry would be allowed to log about 7,000 acres, or about 1 percent, of that a year. Under the accord, which was negotiated over the past four months, all of the logging would be done under stewardship contracts, under which private timber companies agree to conduct restoration work in exchange for a certain amount of timber. The four timber companies that helped draft the plan say it would provide the local timber industry with a steady supply of timber, saving local saw mills from impending demise. "The timber industry in Montana is at the threshold right now," said Ed Regan, resource manager for RY Timber. "If something isn't done within the next two to three years, it's going to look like the Northwest. And nobody's going to be around to do the thinning work." And the Forest Service would benefit from stewardship contracting because the money generated from the contracts stays in Beaverhead-Deerlodge coffers instead of going to the national treasury, he added. The three environmental groups that helped shape the strategy say having the support of the timber industry for the wilderness recommendations is crucial to getting Congress to pass a bill designating the areas as wilderness. While the Forest Service can recommend areas for wilderness protection, only Congress has the authority to designate official wilderness areas. "I think we've collectively come up with a really solid plan and a really balanced plan that speaks to the working forest and restoration on that landscape and also speaks to the wild part of the forest, where we propose more than 500,000 acres for wilderness protection," said Tom France of the National Wildlife Federation. The other two environmental groups involved in the plan are the Montana Wilderness Association and Trout Unlimited. The groups and the timber companies plan to talk to off-road vehicle groups, local government officials, business leaders and other interests to try to drum up broad support for their proposal. But that may be difficult. The strategy has already attracted criticism from off-road groups and some environmental groups. Michael Garrity of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which has sued the Forest Service over certain thinning projects, took issue with the strategy's proposal to allow removal of trees in some inventoried roadless areas. "I have no idea why these so-called environmentalists are advocating logging in roadless areas," he said. Thinning projects should be carried out in areas near homes, not in remote roadless areas, Garrity said. While the strategy would allow thinning and other management activities in roadless areas -- which is permitted under the Bush administration's roadless rule -- France noted that it specifies that any newly constructed roads would have to be closed and rehabilitated within five years of a project's completion in those areas. Congress is considering a bill that would designate the inventoried roadless areas in the forest, along with others in the region, as wilderness, and Garrity said that legislation would provide better protection for the lands than the partnership's wilderness proposal. Brian Hawthorne, public lands director for the Blue Ribbon Coalition, also took issue with the proposal, which he says will close popular off-road vehicle areas. "It's easy for those groups to agree [to] over half a million acres for wilderness, but recreationists depend on those areas, and the small businesses in the surrounding towns depend on us frequenting those areas," he said. Whether the strategy will be incorporated into the official management plan for the forest is uncertain. The plan, which includes several options for how to manage the forest over the next 15 to 20 years, has already been issued, and the comment period just ended. The Forest Service probably does not have the money or the time to issue a supplemental environmental impact statement with a new alternative, said Beaverhead-Deerlodge spokesman Jack deGolia, although he noted that parts of the partnership strategy could be included in the final plan. DeGolia also said it would be unusual for the Forest Service to specify the use of stewardship contracting in a management plan, since the decision on whether to use such contracts typically occurs when a project is undertaken. The final management plan will likely be issued in early 2007, deGolia said.