BigHornRam
Well-known member
SULA n Al Christophersen knows what prime elk habitat looks like.
A few years from now, he’s sure the 130-acre parcel perched on the hillside above the Middle East Fork of the Bitterroot River is going to be a magnet for elk looking to survive the long cold winter months.
But don’t ask him how to get there.
He’s not telling.
“We blindfold people before we show them that spot,” Christophersen said.
That piece of elk nirvana is just one of many the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is helping to create in Montana and around the West as part of the organization’s relatively new Habitat Stewardship Service Program.
Working with public and private land managers, the Elk Foundation is teaming with timber companies and others to improve elk habitat in a variety of different ways.
On the Middle East Fork, the group partnered with Rocky Mountain Log Homes to implement a U.S. Forest Service stewardship contract that provides timber for local mills, reduces hazardous fuels and improves elk habitat.
Stewardship contracts allow the Forest Service to retain receipts collected from a timber sale to pay for other work.
“Frankly, we’ve always thought stewardship contracting made sense,” Christophersen said. “It’s a much more effective way to use receipts. Instead of cycling back through the entire agency, the receipts stay on the same forest where they were generated.”
“We also believe stewardship contracts highlight the use of partnerships and collaboration,” he said. “The Elk Foundation has always engaged in collaboration with local interests.”
On the Middle East Fork, Christophersen said the RMEF felt like it could make a difference for elk and other wildlife.
“We knew this was really good elk country,” Christophersen said. “We looked at this project as an opportunity to be able to create some really good elk habitat.”
Under the terms of the contract, Rocky Mountain Log Homes harvests the mostly dead wood from units selected by the Forest Service. Then crews hired by the Elk Foundation go to work.
For the last few weeks, those crews have been cutting down small trees inside the harvest units, then creating a fire break around each one in preparation for a prescribed burn that, it is hoped, will occur sometime within the next year.
The result, Christophersen said will be a dramatic increase in both the quality and quantity of forage for elk and other wildlife in those areas.
“When it’s completed, some of those areas are going back to their historical conditions n open savannahlike ponderosa pine forest covered with lush forage,” he said. “It will be perfect for elk and other wildlife as well.
“This is good winter range. The elk are in there all the time, and this work will just make it even better.”
Since its inception in the 1980s, the Missoula-based Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has made a name for itself in helping to preserve hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat, and reintroduce elk herds in places they haven’t been seen in generations.
The habitat stewardship program is an extension of those efforts.
“This is really the first year where we’ve had contracts in place,” Christophersen said. “We’re already getting a lot work done on the ground.”
That work runs the gamut from spraying for noxious weeds in Montana’s Elkhorn Mountains and the Swan Valley, to seeding old roadways in Oregon to helping prepare for prescribed fire on the Lolo National Forest.
Soon they’ll embark on their most ambitious project.
Over the next decade, the Elk Foundation will work with Bureau of Land Management and RY Timber to restore aspen and reduce fuels on 9,000 acres in the Wyoming Range southeast of Jackson, Wyo.
RY Timber will harvest the conifers, and crews employed by the Elk Foundation will come in behind them and cut down the smaller trees unlikely to sell, and prepare the areas for a prescribed burn.
“They’ve been losing their aspen stands for years to encroachment from conifers,” Christophersen said. “We’re excited about the potential to improve elk habitat by restoring those stands of aspen.”
So far, the Elk Foundation has either signed contracts or has bid on habitat improvement projects in 11 different states, said Bob Shrink, RMEF’s habitat stewardship services coordinator.
“For us to participate, we’re required to follow the Elk Foundation’s mission statement, which basically is to improve and conserve habitat for elk and other wildlife species,” Shrink said. “All of our service work aims to accomplish those objectives.”
Not everyone is happy with the Elk Foundation’s decisions.
The Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuels Reduction Project has been mired in controversy from its inception. Two groups sued the Forest Service to stop the proposal. That case is currently working its way through the courts.
Larry Campbell represents the Friends of the Bitterroot, one of the groups that sued to stop the project.
Campbell believes the RMEF should have done more in reviewing the environmental groups’ concerns about the project before it entered into a contract with the Forest Service.
“I think it’s irresponsible to a certain degree to enter into a contract without due diligence,” Campbell said. “I don’t believe they’ve done due diligence regarding the public’s interest.”
Campbell said the Elk Foundation should have at least talked with him and others about their concerns before entering the contract.
“They apparently blindly accepted the contract without questioning the science used by the agency,” he said
Campbell doesn’t doubt that RMEF will follow the contract’s requirements.
“I think generally, conservationists as a whole, aren’t concerned with the role of loggers or the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation,” he said. “Our concerns are with the Forest Service and the way they came up with the contract.”
As an elk hunter, Rocky Mountain Log Homes forester Pat Connell was thrilled the RMEF was willing to step forward as a partner in the stewardship project.
“It’s the only place I know where there’s a higher concentration of elk in the wintertime than Grand Teton National Park, where they actually feed hay in the winter,” Connell said. “This area is a crown jewel of elk hunting in Montana.”
Connell said delays caused by the controversy and litigation over the project resulted in the Forest Service collecting less than what it initially anticipated from the sale because the wood lost some of its value. As a result, the RMEF had less money for its portion of the contract.
To emphasize that fact, Connell points to the end of logs sitting along a road along a harvest unit.
“See all the crack and rot,” he said. “On this log, we’ll only get two or three studs out of it. You should get about eight. That’s all a factor of age and delay.”
From the edge of a 40-acre harvest unit, Connell looks toward a ridge filled with hundred of acres of gray dead timber killed by an invasion of bark beetles. Scattered among the dead are a few live Douglas fir and ponderosa pine.
“Those are really what we need to try to save,” he said, indicating the Douglas fir trees that survived the beetle epidemic. “For some reason, those trees had a genetic resistance to beetles. It would be a shame to see them burn.”
But there’s not much chance that any of what remains will ever be harvested, Connell said. Most of what’s left has already lost most of its commercial value.
“We’re running about
25 percent usage of this wood for Rocky,” he said. “I’d hoped we would have been closer to 40 percent. It’s just not there.”
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at [email protected]
A few years from now, he’s sure the 130-acre parcel perched on the hillside above the Middle East Fork of the Bitterroot River is going to be a magnet for elk looking to survive the long cold winter months.
But don’t ask him how to get there.
He’s not telling.
“We blindfold people before we show them that spot,” Christophersen said.
That piece of elk nirvana is just one of many the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is helping to create in Montana and around the West as part of the organization’s relatively new Habitat Stewardship Service Program.
Working with public and private land managers, the Elk Foundation is teaming with timber companies and others to improve elk habitat in a variety of different ways.
On the Middle East Fork, the group partnered with Rocky Mountain Log Homes to implement a U.S. Forest Service stewardship contract that provides timber for local mills, reduces hazardous fuels and improves elk habitat.
Stewardship contracts allow the Forest Service to retain receipts collected from a timber sale to pay for other work.
“Frankly, we’ve always thought stewardship contracting made sense,” Christophersen said. “It’s a much more effective way to use receipts. Instead of cycling back through the entire agency, the receipts stay on the same forest where they were generated.”
“We also believe stewardship contracts highlight the use of partnerships and collaboration,” he said. “The Elk Foundation has always engaged in collaboration with local interests.”
On the Middle East Fork, Christophersen said the RMEF felt like it could make a difference for elk and other wildlife.
“We knew this was really good elk country,” Christophersen said. “We looked at this project as an opportunity to be able to create some really good elk habitat.”
Under the terms of the contract, Rocky Mountain Log Homes harvests the mostly dead wood from units selected by the Forest Service. Then crews hired by the Elk Foundation go to work.
For the last few weeks, those crews have been cutting down small trees inside the harvest units, then creating a fire break around each one in preparation for a prescribed burn that, it is hoped, will occur sometime within the next year.
The result, Christophersen said will be a dramatic increase in both the quality and quantity of forage for elk and other wildlife in those areas.
“When it’s completed, some of those areas are going back to their historical conditions n open savannahlike ponderosa pine forest covered with lush forage,” he said. “It will be perfect for elk and other wildlife as well.
“This is good winter range. The elk are in there all the time, and this work will just make it even better.”
Since its inception in the 1980s, the Missoula-based Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has made a name for itself in helping to preserve hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat, and reintroduce elk herds in places they haven’t been seen in generations.
The habitat stewardship program is an extension of those efforts.
“This is really the first year where we’ve had contracts in place,” Christophersen said. “We’re already getting a lot work done on the ground.”
That work runs the gamut from spraying for noxious weeds in Montana’s Elkhorn Mountains and the Swan Valley, to seeding old roadways in Oregon to helping prepare for prescribed fire on the Lolo National Forest.
Soon they’ll embark on their most ambitious project.
Over the next decade, the Elk Foundation will work with Bureau of Land Management and RY Timber to restore aspen and reduce fuels on 9,000 acres in the Wyoming Range southeast of Jackson, Wyo.
RY Timber will harvest the conifers, and crews employed by the Elk Foundation will come in behind them and cut down the smaller trees unlikely to sell, and prepare the areas for a prescribed burn.
“They’ve been losing their aspen stands for years to encroachment from conifers,” Christophersen said. “We’re excited about the potential to improve elk habitat by restoring those stands of aspen.”
So far, the Elk Foundation has either signed contracts or has bid on habitat improvement projects in 11 different states, said Bob Shrink, RMEF’s habitat stewardship services coordinator.
“For us to participate, we’re required to follow the Elk Foundation’s mission statement, which basically is to improve and conserve habitat for elk and other wildlife species,” Shrink said. “All of our service work aims to accomplish those objectives.”
Not everyone is happy with the Elk Foundation’s decisions.
The Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuels Reduction Project has been mired in controversy from its inception. Two groups sued the Forest Service to stop the proposal. That case is currently working its way through the courts.
Larry Campbell represents the Friends of the Bitterroot, one of the groups that sued to stop the project.
Campbell believes the RMEF should have done more in reviewing the environmental groups’ concerns about the project before it entered into a contract with the Forest Service.
“I think it’s irresponsible to a certain degree to enter into a contract without due diligence,” Campbell said. “I don’t believe they’ve done due diligence regarding the public’s interest.”
Campbell said the Elk Foundation should have at least talked with him and others about their concerns before entering the contract.
“They apparently blindly accepted the contract without questioning the science used by the agency,” he said
Campbell doesn’t doubt that RMEF will follow the contract’s requirements.
“I think generally, conservationists as a whole, aren’t concerned with the role of loggers or the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation,” he said. “Our concerns are with the Forest Service and the way they came up with the contract.”
As an elk hunter, Rocky Mountain Log Homes forester Pat Connell was thrilled the RMEF was willing to step forward as a partner in the stewardship project.
“It’s the only place I know where there’s a higher concentration of elk in the wintertime than Grand Teton National Park, where they actually feed hay in the winter,” Connell said. “This area is a crown jewel of elk hunting in Montana.”
Connell said delays caused by the controversy and litigation over the project resulted in the Forest Service collecting less than what it initially anticipated from the sale because the wood lost some of its value. As a result, the RMEF had less money for its portion of the contract.
To emphasize that fact, Connell points to the end of logs sitting along a road along a harvest unit.
“See all the crack and rot,” he said. “On this log, we’ll only get two or three studs out of it. You should get about eight. That’s all a factor of age and delay.”
From the edge of a 40-acre harvest unit, Connell looks toward a ridge filled with hundred of acres of gray dead timber killed by an invasion of bark beetles. Scattered among the dead are a few live Douglas fir and ponderosa pine.
“Those are really what we need to try to save,” he said, indicating the Douglas fir trees that survived the beetle epidemic. “For some reason, those trees had a genetic resistance to beetles. It would be a shame to see them burn.”
But there’s not much chance that any of what remains will ever be harvested, Connell said. Most of what’s left has already lost most of its commercial value.
“We’re running about
25 percent usage of this wood for Rocky,” he said. “I’d hoped we would have been closer to 40 percent. It’s just not there.”
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at [email protected]
