Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has asked the U.S. Forest Service to concentrate its restoration efforts on 5.1 million acres of timberland local advocates believe are most at risk from insect damage in the next 15 years.
A provision in the recently passed federal farm bill asked governors across the nation to advise the Forest Service on priority landscapes where they’d like the agency to focus its management efforts.
Montana State Forester Bob Harrington said Bullock’s choices reflected long-standing local interests. “We want to reward those collaboratives that came together to compromise and agree on projects,” Harrington said Monday. “This is a way to restore and prepare landscapes for what we know is coming in the future.”
But while the farm bill gave governors the authority to prioritize these areas, it did not provide any funding for work to be done.
“There’s no new money to implement these titles,” Harrington said. “That will be a big part of the discussion, because without funding to conduct analysis and have staff on the ground, we’re not going to make a lot of progress. But this helps with reprioritizing the (Forest Service) budget and workload to refocus priority on some of these landscapes. I hope we can use the momentum behind the farm bill to build partnerships with the states and Forest Service. There’s huge potential, and it would be good to have funding follow.”
From The Missoulian: https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/bullock-asks-u-s-forest-service-to-focus-restoration-on/article_7c8b3678-beb9-11e3-bf62-001a4bcf887a.html