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Recommended Wilderness Areas among top Forest Plan Revision concerns

Last week's meeting on the draft revised Forest Plan and draft environmental impact statement for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest highlighted concerns many in the area have about the future of access to National Forest land around Lincoln.

The Forest Plan Revision Team hosted the meeting at the Lincoln Community Hall July 30 to answer questions about five alternative versions of the draft plan and DEIS, and to provide information for people on how to comment on them. It was the eighth of 11 such meetings in towns around the forest.

The U.S. Forest Service released the draft revised "Land and Resource Management Plan" and the associate DEIS for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest June 8, opening a 90-day comment period that ends Sept. 6.

Like others who attended, Zach Muse and Chad Sutej felt the meeting at the Lincoln Community Hall was ineffective, due in part to a structure centered on breakout group discussions that proved difficult to take part in, as voices echoed and overlapped in a building that's acoustically better suited for performances and presentations than multiple, simultaneous discussions.

Both men are, in effect, now mounting a grass roots campaign to get people to comment on the alternatives by getting the word out to friends and neighbors about the plan and encouraging them to talk to more people about it.

As Muse sees it, average residents here at a disadvantage when it comes to responding to the draft Forest Plan, which is a massive document that runs into the thousands of pages. He said organized environmental groups often have staff who can comb backward and forward through the thousands of pages of detailed documents and provide specific information for comments to their members, some of whom may never set foot in the area, let alone try to make a living here.

"We don't have to get organized, but we've gotta stand up," he said.

"Just talking to people is the only way I can do it," said Sutej, who has also been providing information to residents in the Marysville area.

Locally, the new forest plan could have a significant impact on Lincoln.

The alternatives for the current draft plan range from "no action," to alternatives that include between nine and 16 Recommended Wilderness Areas, to an alternative that has no recommended wilderness, but instead emphasizes timber production.

Muse pointed out that the "no action" alternative isn't really an alternative, since that would mean keeping the two separate 1986 Forest Plans in place, despite the major changes that have occurred since then.

According to the Forest Service, Recommended Wilderness Areas are typically identified during Forest Plan revisions and aren't the same as designated wilderness. RWA's can allow for mechanized or motorized access, which is a component of one alternative, and for timber harvest, but they are areas the Forest Service recommends to Congress for formal designation as wilderness.

The idea that so much more area around Lincoln could one day be designated wilderness has created apprehension among residents who are concerned they're being systematically locked out of public land in the area. Likewise, there is concern about losing potential timber harvest in those areas and, in the wake of last years' fire season, about the ability to manage the forest to limit wildfire impact.

Through a series of community conversations in 2015 and 2016 and from the thousand-plus comments received on an initial draft Forest Plan released in December 2016, the Forest Plan Revision team identified three major issues of concern that drove development of the alternatives for the draft Forest Plan and DEIS. While timber harvest and timber production proved to be a major topic of concern, it was RWA's that topped the list.

"Far and away, the majority of comments we received were in regard to recommended wilderness, both the amount and location of what we would recommend and whether or not we would allow motorized or mechanized transportation within the recommended wilderness areas," said Forest Plan Revision team leader Deb Entwhistle, who sat through an extended diatribe about the evils of the Forest Service during a group discussion at last week's meeting here.

She said at the latest meetings, Recommended Wilderness Areas remain the single biggest concern discussed. The comments she's heard tend to be that they have too much, but she said there are also many people who want to see more.

"There are a lot of passionate people," she said. "In the end, we're trying to do things that balance."

She said the general sense of polarization in the country, with so many people seeing things as either all right or all wrong, makes finding a balance challenging.

"My goal for this plan and the Forest Service is to try to strike the balance for multiple use. And it may be that Lincoln and this geographic setting doesn't really need any recommended wilderness areas. I don't know, but that's what we have to figure out."

Muse stressed that people need to be proactive and delve into the parts of the plan that affect areas they're concerned about, and that they have to make intelligent and relevant comments on it while they still can, rather than wait until all is said and done and then complain about it.

Sutej is cynical about what the Forest Service will ultimately do and believes they will probably choose a plan with RWA's that limit motorized access unless there are enough voices that make themselves heard.

Despite his skepticism, Sutej feels there is no point in submitting comments that are belligerent rants or personal feelings about the Forest Service or wilderness. Instead, he's advising people to do their homework, to write comments that actually address what's in the plan, and review what they're trying to say before submitting it.

According to Entwhistle, that's what they want to see.

"We're hopeful that people will submit comments; specifics about what they like and don't like," she said. "That's very much the key. The more they can say about what they don't like, or do like, versus just general statements, would be helpful."

Looking further ahead, submitting a formal and substantive comment makes a person eligible to file an objection to the final draft of the plan, before it's signed

Lincoln District Ranger Michael Stansberry said he was impressed by the turnout at the meeting and anticipates a significant comment load from residents concerned about wilderness. Since the comment process is a concern for some people, Stansberry said they can stop in at the Lincoln Ranger Station, where they will have online access available for folks who would like to use it to make comments. They can also provide forms for written comments that can be mailed in to HLCNF office in Helena.

Stansberry said that the people who think the Forest Service has already decided what they will do should make their comments and then watch the process. If the comments are constrictive, they must take them into consideration.

"The power in the comment is in revising those alternatives, or increating an entirely new alternative," he said.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/hlcnf/landmanagement/planning/?cid=fseprd524144

 

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