Montana Standard
Montana’s fast-changing forests require the state's land managers to work better together, according to a draft action plan on its way to Gov. Steve Bullock’s office.
Insect infestations, lengthening wildfire seasons, and home building in high-risk fire zones on 3.8 million acres of forested land will get attention through the plan. That includes about 500,000 acres in the Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI, where home-building has put residents at high risk of wildland fire danger. It also includes 123,000 acres considered crucial drinking water source watersheds.
The plan excluded about 7 million acres of forest already covered by other management programs or that didn’t have enough baseline data to provide direction. And it’s separate from a 5-million-acre priority landscape plan based on the 2014 Farm Bill, which coordinated U.S. Forest Service activity with state forestry projects.
“Some people are mistakenly looking at this and saying we’re planning on logging 3.9 million acres,” said Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Forestry Chief Sonya Germann. “That’s one of the tools we employ, but the forest action plan is more about coordination of projects already happening.”