Tag Archives: farm bill

Montana starts handing out farm bill money to national forests

The State of Montana is beginning to disburse grant money for national forest projects, including the Flathead and Kootenai forests . . .

About $1 million in state grants will be distributed to 13 national forest projects across Montana over the next few months as Montana’s first installment of funding authorized in the 2014 federal farm bill.

Four projects in the Flathead and Kootenai national forests will receive a total of $260,000.

The bill created the authority for state governors to nominate up to 5 million acres of “Priority Landscape Areas” in national forests within their states, focused on identifying tracts of land at the highest risk for disease, insect infestation and wildfires.

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Forest Service approves Bullock’s forest restoration picks

As expected, the U.S. Forest Service has approved Gov. Bullock’s forest restoration proposal . . .

The Forest Service has approved Gov. Steve Bullock’s forest restoration proposal for federal lands across Montana.

Bullock recently nominated about 5 million acres of timberlands across the state, including several regions in the Flathead for more logging and other forest management under the recently passed Farm Bill.

The eligible lands are located in the Swan River watershed, the southern end of the Whitefish Range and the Tally Lake Ranger District.

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Another lawsuit filed over forest priority nominations

Another lawsuit challenges Gov. Steve Bullock’s nomination of  more than 5.1 million acres of national forest land in Montana as top priorities for restoration . . .

A new lawsuit has been filed over Gov. Steve Bullock’s nomination of 5.1 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land for priority management.

The complaint filed last week by Wildwest Institute, Conservation Congress and Friends of the Bitterroot is the second since Bullock forwarded his choices for expedited restoration and management to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in April.

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George Wuerthner: Manage federal forest lands with all Americans in mind

In a Missoulian op-ed, George Wuerthner expresses misgivings about the impact of the forest restoration provisions in the new farm bill . . .

Recently the Bullock administration convened a committee to designate federal forest lands that could be logged under a special categorical exclusion provision of the recently passed Farm Bill.

This section of the Farm Bill repeals the National Environmental Policy Act to allow an unlimited number of commercial logging projects – up to 3,000 acres in size each – to be implemented on U.S. national forests without any environmental analysis of harmful effects to threatened/endangered or sensitive species. It would also eliminate administrative appeals, severely reducing public participation in forest management decisions.

Under the proposal, any lands outside of special set asides like wilderness areas and proposed wilderness deemed “threatened” by insects, disease or wildfire could be logged. Since insects, disease and wildfire are the major ecological processes that rejuvenate and restore forest ecosystems, and are found in all forested ecosystems, this means just about any federal forest lands could potentially be logged.

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See also: “Gov. Bullock lists 5.1 million acres of forest lands for restoration

Gov. Bullock lists 5.1 million acres of forest lands for restoration

Part of the Flathead National Forest is on the list . . .

Gov. Steve Bullock has identified more than 5.1 million acres of national forest land in Montana as top priorities for restoration.

The Democrat said Monday the forest areas he picked are declining in health, have a risk of increased tree deaths or pose a risk to public infrastructure or safety.

The farm bill passed by Congress this year allows governors to nominate forest restoration priorities. Bullock says his aim in nominating 8,000 square miles from northwestern to south-central Montana is to increase the pace and scale of restoration and strengthen the role of citizen collaborative groups.

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Some fear farm bill grant program could harm Montana elk

A vaccine research provision in the recently passed farm bill has some folks worried that it could be used to fund ill-considered disease eradication programs in elk populations . . .

Some wildlife advocates worry a considerably rewritten wildlife disease provision in the final version of the federal farm bill will make it much harder to track livestock agencies’ efforts to control wild elk…

…[A] section called the Competitive, Special and Facilities Research Grant Act included a line calling for vaccine research to control “pests and diseases (especially zoonotic diseases) in wildlife reservoirs presenting a potential concern to public health or domestic livestock and pests and diseases in minor species (including deer, elk and bison).” That goes into a grant program authorized to spend about $3.5 billion over five years.

The problem, according to people like Glenn Hockett of the Gallatin Wildlife Association, is whether some of those grants will go toward the eradication of brucellosis in wildlife. Attempting to do so could devastate Montana’s wild elk herds without much benefit to its cattle industry, he said.

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