Bullock says western states are making progress in better managing … – Helena Independent Record

WHITEFISH After a year of working to bring diverse interests to the table to find better ways to manage forest and rangelands across the West, Gov. Steve Bullock said progress had been made but more needs to be done.

Bullock presented a report Tuesday on his National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative at the Western Governors' Association meeting in Whitefish.

Im confident this initiative will inspire further commitment among western governors and our partners to continue working together, in a bipartisan way and on a collaborative basis, to promote the health and resilience of our forests and rangelands, Bullock said.

During a discussion Tuesday, the governors in attendance and other stakeholders said they were pleased with the progress to date. Governors have hosted workshops across the West in the last 12 months to begin the work of developing the initiative.

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said the idea of sharing stewardship and working across ownership boundaries with states and counties is vital.

The clear and unanimous agreement of what it will take to get things done on the ground is the most striking part'' of the report of the first year of the initiative, Tidwell said.

He said the Forest Service, for example, needs to adapt its National Environmental Policy Act process to accomplish the work thats needed today.

Were looking for ways to take on these larger landscapes and to be able to do the analysis so that were looking at not a few 1,000 acres, but more like tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of acres, Tidwell said. Thats what its going to take to really make the change on the landscape.

Mark Brinkmeyer, the chair of the Idaho Forest Group, said timber companies cant work without some certainty.

Increasing the scale of forest management is important, Brinkmeyer said. Partnerships and collaboratives are important. Through the collaboratives, our company has made significant investments, but they dont work unless we have certainty because they are subject to litigation.

The rules around collaboratives are that people around the table make decisions, come up with a plan and its implemented, he said. However, if someone is not at the table they can bring litigation and the issue stops. We lost several million acres and several million feet of timber this year due to litigation. That issue needs to be addressed and addressed now.

Lynn Scarlett of The Nature Conservancy said that group embraces the Western Governors Association initiative of partnership, integrated science and landscape stewardship.

The Nature Conservancy owns over 100,000 acres of land in Montana and more throughout the country. Scarlett said those lands are actively managed and have helped keep some family-owned mills in Montana operating by delivering tens of millions of board feet to the market.

Scarlett said the efforts outlined by the initiative are promising, but not durable without reliable funding.

Current federal funding levels are out-of-sync with the needs arising from catastrophic wildfire, she said. Six western states have had their most destructive wildfires in the last six years. Filling funding gaps by borrowing from other programs, including fuels treatment programs and actions that advance collaborative conservation, makes it difficult to make a long term difference on the landscape.

In 1990, 16 percent of the Forest Services budget went to fire suppression. Today, that number nears 60 percent.

Scarlett said the conservancy supports the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, but beyond that, it supports a comprehensive solution that covers fire operations and reduces risks of catastrophic fire. It also supports a suite of programs for collaborative conservation and the science that ensures its effectiveness.

Tidwell said hes been talking for the past eight years about the need to restore anywhere between 65 million to 83 million acres of national forest. Each year, the Forest Service treats only about four million acres.

Were way behind the eight ball on this, Tidwell said.

Tidwell likens the tens of millions of acres that need restoration to deferred maintenance.

The longer it takes for us to get out there and really, truly accelerate the pace and scale, were just passing that on to the next generation, he said. I think we have the social advocacy today for us to be able to get more work done.

"Its going to take all of us. Its going to take the federal entities working together. Its going to take the states, counties and NGOs to actually be able to move forward.

Bullock believes the initiative is a good way to make that happen.

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Bullock says western states are making progress in better managing ... - Helena Independent Record