Tag Archives: U.S. Forest Service

Region 1 Forester Faye Krueger retiring

News,

Faye Krueger, the head of the U.S. Forest Service’s Region 1,  is retiring the end of January . . .

Regional Forester Faye Krueger will retire from her post at the head of the U.S. Forest Service’s Region 1 headquarters in Missoula at the end of January.

“I’ve been eligible to retire for a while, and we decided it was time to reconnect with family and our grandkids,” Krueger said Friday. “I’m looking forward to that.”

Krueger, 59, took the top job on the five-state Region 1 almost three years ago. She joined the Forest Service as a seasonal worker in 1980.

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U.S. Forest Service releases proposed new travel rule for snowmobiles

News,

The proposed new Forest Service snowmobile regulations are pretty much the same as the current set . . .

Snowmobile access decisions on U.S. Forest Service land would remain at the local level, under a new travel rule the agency published on Wednesday.

That’s a relief for snowmobile clubs that worried their ability to use some areas might be moved to regional or national levels. But the conservation group whose lawsuit forced the Forest Service rewrite said the new rule didn’t fix any of the old problems.

Read more . . .

Additional material: full text of the proposed snowmobile travel rule

New USFS draft snowmobile guidelines to be released this week

News, ,

Here we go again. The U.S. Forest Service is writing new snowmobile guidelines . . .

New draft guidelines for snowmobile management in the National Forest System will be released [this] week, but advance details remain scarce.

The U.S. Forest Service announced it will publish its “over-snow vehicle travel management rule” in the Federal Register on Wednesday. That starts a 45-day public comment period. The Forest Service plans to release the final rule by Sept. 9.

“We’ve been asking for input or anything else, but we’ve been completely locked out of the negotiations,” said Kurt Friede, owner of Kurt’s Polaris in Seeley Lake and a member of several snowmobile advocacy groups. “How can we find out if it’s good for us or bad for us, when we haven’t been allowed to have any input on it? It creates a lot of irritation.”

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Firefighting costs scuttled several other projects

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Fighting wildfires pulled Forest Service money away from a number of other projects last year . . .

Paying for forest fires pre-empted lots of U.S. Forest Service work last year, according to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Mine cleanup work in the Ninemile Ranger District and partnership arrangements with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks were among the western Montana jobs dropped in 2013 when the federal agency had to redirect $505 million of its annual budget for fire suppression.

The Forest Service also pulled $440 million away from its regular budget in 2012.

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U.S. Forest Service expands tanker fleet

Fire Information and Status, News, , ,

Well, this is encouraging. The Forest Service managed to scrape up some more firefighting aircraft this year. Even more would be better, but . . .

As the Obama administration pushes Congress to ensure that enough money is available to fight destructive wildfires, the U.S. Forest Service announced Tuesday it was adding four aircraft to its firefighting fleet ahead of what’s expected to be another hot, dry summer in the West.

In a statement, the service said it will have a second DC10 and three smaller planes in service in the coming weeks to support over 10,000 firefighters “in the face of what is shaping up to be a catastrophic fire season in the southwest.”

The Forest Service expects to exceed this year’s budget in July, two months before this fiscal year ends. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack discussed 2015 budget proposals by the administration Tuesday in Colorado, where deadly fires in 2012 and 2013 destroyed hundreds of homes.

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A new approach to paying for major wildfires

Fire Information and Status, News,

The Obama administration wants to pay for catastrophic wildfires with natural disaster funds . . .

The Obama administration’s proposed 2015 budget aims to change how the federal government pays for catastrophic wildfires.

In the past, large wildfires were paid for through the Forest Service budget. If a large fire broke out, the service would “borrow” money from funds used for forest restoration and other projects.

In the past, the Forest Service spent about 16 percent of its total budget on firefighting. But in more recent years, that figure has dramatically increased to about 40 percent, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said last week.

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U.S. Forest Service chief favors wilderness conservation

Environmental Issues, News, ,

The Forest Service chief weighs in on wilderness at the “Room to Roam” Wilderness Issues Lecture Series in Missoula . . .

The U.S. Forest Service was founded on the idea of conserving the nation’s wild country, and it will continue that mission even as the opportunities to do so shrink, according to agency Chief Tom Tidwell.

“Once you use wilderness for something else, for our generation or future generations it’s gone,” Tidwell said during a lecture at the University of Montana on Tuesday. “It can shrink, but not grow.”

But Tidwell said we need blank spaces on the map to, as conservationist Wallace Stegner put it, preserve the challenge against which we as a people were formed. Those places defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964 serve as both places of human refreshment and ecological reserve in a landscape that’s getting ever more crowded.

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Next Flathead Forest Friday meeting focuses on upcoming Wilderness Act anniversary

History, News,

The Flathead National Forest has another “Flathead Forest Friday” meeting coming up on Friday, November 22. This time it’s at the Nite Owl in Columbia Falls. Here’s the press release . . .

Everyone Invited for a Breakfast Chat on Friday, November 22nd

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act which preserves more than 100 million acres of wild-lands nationwide, including the Mission Mountains, Great Bear, Scapegoat and Bob Marshall Wilderness areas on the Flathead National Forest. The public is invited to a no-host breakfast on Friday, November 22, 2013 to learn about a number of events planned around the Flathead Valley next year to mark the anniversary and to help connect people to the wilderness. The breakfast will start at 7:00 AM at the Night Owl restaurant in Columbia Falls.

On September 3, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act which established the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) setting aside an initial 9.1 million acres of wild-lands for the use and benefit of the American people. Over the past 50 years Congress has added over 100 million acres to this unique land preservation system. The 1964 Wilderness Act defines “Wilderness” as areas where the earth and its communities of life are left unchanged by people, where the primary forces of nature are in control, and where people themselves are visitors who do not remain.

Multiple agencies and organizations are partnering to host a number of events during 2014. Spotted Bear District Ranger Deb Mucklow and Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation Executive Director Carol Treadwell will join our Flathead Forest Friday guests to discuss the events planned in the Flathead Valley.

Every other month, the Forest Service will coordinate these no-host breakfast meetings at a local restaurant with the goal of sharing good food, great company, and a little information about what’s happening on our National Forest. We hope the event will be a great way to discuss public land management opportunities and challenges that are important to us all.

If you plan to attend or have any questions, please notify Public Affairs Officer Wade Muehlhof at ewmuehlhof@fs.fed.us or (406) 758-5252. Your response allows us to plan accordingly with the restaurant.

Flathead River plan needs updating

News, , ,

A new Wild and Scenic River management plan for portions of the Flathead River, including the North Fork, is in the works . . .

One of the most noticeable changes in the North Fork Flathead River drainage can be found on the river — at its put-in and take-out sites for floaters — and it is a change that is in part driving an effort to develop a new Wild and Scenic River management plan…

Vehicles loaded with rafts, kayaks and canoes are now a far more common sight than they were in 1980, when the current river management plan was developed. That came on the heels of portions of the North, South and Middle forks of the Flathead River being designated as Wild and Scenic rivers in 1976.

“It’s pretty old,” Hungry Horse-Glacier View District Ranger Rob Davies said of the river management plan. “We’re not saying it’s bad. There are elements that are very good in that plan. We don’t want to throw it out and start from scratch. We want to figure out what needs to change, what elements of that plan need fixing.”

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Report says national forest trails need a lot of work

News,

The U.S. General Accounting Office just released a discouraging report on the state of the Forest Service trail network. No surprise to anyone familiar with the North Folk’s trail inventory, only about a fourth of them receive adequate maintenance . . .

A new federal report says only one-quarter of U.S. Forest Service trails meet the agency’s own standards as it attempts to catch up with a $524 million maintenance deficit.

Volunteer groups like the Backcountry Horsemen of America and The Wilderness Society have stepped into that gap, but they worry the backlog will drive folks out of the woods.

“We found problems with trail maintenance was undermining support for wilderness and public land in general,” said Paul Spitler, director of wilderness campaigns for The Wilderness Society…

Continue reading . . .

Additional material: GAO report on the state of Forest Service trails