The Helena National Forest is proposing a timber and vegetation project across 25,000 acres of a 61,500-acre area in the Ten Mile drainage, with the goal of improving forest and stream health, including water quantity and quality for the city of Helena’s water supply and improving public and firefighter safety.
The proposal calls for commercial and noncommercial logging and prescribed burning within the upper-Ten Mile drainage. The area includes around 24,000 acres of Forest Service lands and 1,000 acres of BLM lands, of which about 8,500 acres would go into a timber sale.
The Forest Service is taking public comment on the proposal until Dec. 5, which includes recommendations from the original Ten Mile Watershed Collaborative Committee convened in 2008 and the Tri-County FireSafe Working Group. Decades of fire suppression, limited management and ongoing insect infestation and disease have left dense fuel accumulations and increased risk of a large-scale fire, planning documents said.
“It’s definitely a landscape-level project,” said Kathy Bushnell, public affairs officer for the Helena National Forest. “Implementation would occur over multiple years.”
In the event of a wildfire, conditions on the ground would make suppression difficult and infrastructure and property would likely suffer damage, planning documents said. Research from the Rocky Mountain Research Station Fire Lab in Missoula has shown that around 40 percent of a watershed requires forestry and vegetation work, including logging and burning to effectively alter fire behavior and create a variety of trees in different age classes, Bushnell said.
From the Helena Independent Record: https://helenair.com/news/local/updated-forest-service-proposing-k-acre-project-in-ten-mile/article_497bbb59-ef82-5d7b-8b8e-3db9221efc0f.html