February, 2003
Rick Bass
As with many forests around the country, the Kootenai National Forest is currently in the important beginning stages of its Forest Plan Revision, as required by Congress every ten years. Often called "Montana's only rainforest," the 2.2 million acre Kootenai, in the far northwestern corner of Montana, with its low elevation (it contains the state's lowest point, at 1880 feet), and its high precipitation, used to grow big trees--larch, cedar, hemlock, spruce, white pine, Doug and grand and alpine fir, Ponderosa and lodgepole and whitebark pine--though most of the giants are long-gone, now.
Still, the species biodiversity--animal and vegetative--remains, as does a clamant wildness. Nothing has ever gone extinct in the Kootenai. Because of the timber industry's traditional grip on this relatively unpopulated area (year after year the Kootenai has given up more timber than any other forest in Montana), it's quite arguably the most underserved region, in terms of wilderness protection, in the entire state. There are less than 100,000 acres protected in the slender rock-and-ice spine of the Cabinet Mountains wilderness (which at its thinnest bottleneck is less than 500 yards wide!), while nearly 700,000 acres of critical roadless areas remain unprotected. In addition, the Yaak Valley, in the northernmost part of the forest, contains zero acres of wilderness--an utter travesty.
Within the Kootenai, the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem contains the most imperiled population of grizzlies in the United States, with estimates ranging wildly, from as few as eleven bears left, to no more than three dozen bears remaining, in addition to extremely high numbers of human-caused mortalities in the last few years.
The excesses of timber harvest in the past have led the Kootenai National Forest increasingly to a position where the old ways of upping the cut are no longer possible--not if we are to maintain and recover the other resource values that we ask of the forest. (Recognizing this, the Bush administration is working with industry in a frantic attempt to gut environmental rules and safeguards).
The Kootenai, which is combining its Forest Plan revision with the adjacent Idaho Panhandle National Forest, is essential to the wilderness core and spirit of western Montana, serving not just as a unique reservoir of wildness, but as a link between Canada and the Salmon-Selway/Bitterroot country, as well as the only viable U.S. corridor between the Glacier/Bob Marshall country and the Selkirk Range of Idaho. Traditional extractive industry, rather than seeking to find common ground local solutions, is pouring huge amounts of time and energy and cash into efforts to implement major policy change which, in addition to being disastrous for the Kootenai, would also surely spill over into other national forests around the state, and the country. Your letters and participation will be needed steadily throughout the Forest Plan process (the scoping phase ends December 1st), and as Montana residents, your voice will carry extra clarity.
In your letter, please stress the need to manage all of the Kootenai's last remaining roadless areas (1000 acres or larger) as wilderness, as well as urging the retention of more old growth and more large-diameter trees. Encourage more funding for restoration, and the creation of restoration-industry jobs, and point out that one of the immense and developing problems on the Kootenai, rarely discussed, is an explosion of noxious weeds into recent logging units, and up and down the thousands of miles of old logging roads. This new Forest Plan will establish the direction for the Kootenai and Idaho Panhandle forests for the next 10-15 years, which might be all the Kootenai's remaining grizzlies have left, so now is no time to be ambiguous in your demands. Write today!
Send comments to:
USDA Forest Service
Attn: KIPZ Revision Team
1101 U.S.Highway 2 West
Libby, MT 59923
or contact them at the website: www.fs.fed.us/kipz
For maximum effectiveness, send a copy of your letter to Max Baucus, U.S. Senate,. Washington D.C. 20510, and Brad Powell, P.O. Box 7669, Missoula, MT 59807, and Rep. Dennis Rehberg, U.S. House, Washington, D.C. 20515 and Yaak Valley Forest Council, 155 Riverview, Troy, MT 59935.
Contact us at: morri051@tc.umn.edu
Yaak Website address: www.oocities.org/RainForest/Vines/5054
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