Lolo Forest Plan Update

The comment period closed July 8th despite a request from numerous organizations and individuals to extend the comment period by 15 days. Lolo NF Supervisor Carolyn Upton denied the request, meaning citizens had only 30 days including the long Fourth of July holiday to absorb and respond to over 900 pages of documents.

The substance of the Draft Assessment is seriously lacking due to the Lolo National Forest’s failure to complete required Monitoring and Evaluation and trends are going in the wrong direction.

Key findings of the analysis:

• Major ecosystem stressors including logging, roadbuilding and recreation show disturbing trends of rapid growth and help drive climate change effects;
• Major ecosystem drivers including habitat and species connectivity, aquatics and native bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout and old growth show disturbing trends of decline as the Lolo has planned or is planning major timber sales in key connectivity areas;
• The Forest Service has seriously mishandled and mischaracterized the science on wildland fire;
• The Forest Service list of Species of Conservation Concern is wholly inadequate. It contains just one animal, two birds and eight plants out of approximately 170 species listed by the Montana Natural Heritage Program that are documented to occur in Missoula County and the Lolo National Forest area. There are another 62 species listed as sensitive by the Regional Forester but most of these are not on the Lolo Draft SCC list either.
• The Forest Service needs to add another 25 species to a list of Focal or Management Indicator Species including currently listed threatened, endangered and candidate species. Species meriting Focal/MIS status include grizzly bear, elk, wolverine, lynx, fisher, bull trout, westslope cutthroat.
  Unique ecological systems including whitebark pine, mychorrizal fungi, old growth forests, fens and bogs and severely burned forest areas need special monitoring and protection. The current Lolo NF Plan only calls for 8% of the forest to be old growth.

The groups that wrote the analysis are the Flathead-Lolo-Bitterroot Citizen Task Force,

Friends of the Bitterroot, Friends of the Clearwater, WildEarth Guardians, Wilderness Watch and Western Watersheds Project.

Download the Comments (PDF)