A Bitterroot Valley environmental group is skeptical of a Forest Service plan to improve watersheds near Darby.
Local motorized off-road users, meanwhile, are supporting the 29,000 acre Darby Lumber Lands Project.
The area is made up of lands previously owned by several different organizations and eventually acquired by the Forest Service. It's been extensively logged and also partially burned during the fires of 2000. As a result, Bitterroot Forest hydrologist, Ed Snook, says too much sediment is getting into local waterways.
"So, these road systems are basically unraveling before our eyes. It's an opportunity for us to downsize the road system so that it's more sustainable over the long run and we dial back the accelerated erosion associated with them."
The Forest Service wants to decommission or close roads and open and tie others together. Snook says the plan also creates a sustainable motorized access system, including three new dedicated looped trails: one 25-miles long, one 50-miles and one 100-miles long.
The Ravalli County Off Road Users Association worked closely with the Forest Service to map Darby Lumber area roads. Association member Mike Jeffords likes what he seeing in this environmental analysis.
"So it will give the single track guys about 100 miles of motorcycle and it gives us access to those three loops so that people do have the access and the fun."
But not everyone is as enthusiastic. Larry Campbell of Friends of the Bitterroot just obtained a copy of the Forest Service’s plan. He says it does has some good ideas.
"But in fact there's what I'd say is a poison pill in there. They are proposing to build new roads in an area where both Sleeping Child and Rye Creek are listed as impaired watersheds by the state."
Campbell wonders if there aren't more appropriate areas in the forest for the new motorized access loops.
"They haven't analyzed enough to know that if the need is there, where else that need might be satisfied, that should have been done within the context of the travel plan, which, like I say has been due out any day now."
Off-roader Mike Jeffords says the Darby Lumber Lands plan isn't going to make everybody happy, but is glad the Forest Service listened to his group’s concerns.
"A lot of people finally realized that the Forest Service is not our enemy. The same with them; they realized that off-road users are their friends, their neighbors, maybe somebody they sit next to in the pew at church."
The plan also includes areas of Aspen regeneration which would be thinned out to reduce competition.
You can read the Darby Lumber Lands Project environmental assessment here.
Public comments on the project are being taken until February 23rd.
Submit comments to: Chuck Oliver, District Ranger, by one of the following methods:
- mail: 712 North Main, Darby, Montana, 59829
- fax: (406) 821-4264
- email: comments-northern-bitterroot-darby@fs.fed.us (Please put “Comments on Darby Lumber Lands” in the subject line) in order to be considered.
Comments on the EA are due February 23, 2015. For more information about the project contact Ed Snook at (406) 363-7103 or esnook@fs.fed.us.
