After Montana wildfires, elected leaders, environmental groups spar over forest management

By Jonathon Ambarian
KTVH
November 9, 2017
Category: Forestry
Region: US West

(HELENA) Off Cabin Gulch Road, in the Big Belt Mountains east of Townsend, you can see signs of change in parts of the forest: tree stumps, brush piles and orange blazes on the trunks. Since May 2014, the U.S. Forest Service and its contractors have been conducting the Cabin Gulch Vegetation Project, a large-scale forest management project, in this area. It includes hundreds of acres of logging, along with prescribed fires. …The project area covers more than 15,000 acres north of U.S. Highway 12. Lewellen said the Forest Service conducted analysis across that area and identified about 1,900 acres that would benefit from treatment. …The Cabin Gulch lawsuit was just one of many the Alliance for the Wild Rockies has filed against Forest Service vegetation projects.  …Now, members of Montana’s congressional delegation are proposing changes to those laws, to make it easier for forest management projects to move forward.

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