Missoulian
ROB CHANEY
November 14, 2008
SEELEY LAKE - Someone joked that a few years ago to get the same crowd of loggers, outfitters, snowmobilers, government officials and environmentalists in the same Seeley Lake meeting hall, there would have had to be a forest fire or boxing gloves.
But Thursday night, it was the Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project that packed 100 people into the Seeley Lake Community Center. And the attitude was uniformly positive to the project's vision of more jobs, more timber and more wilderness in the same piece of legislation.
“We need to figure out what to do in this valley to keep the jobs here and keep the tourists coming,” said Robin Matthews, a real estate broker and former U.S. Forest Service employee who attended the meeting. “This is a pretty diverse group. They realize what it takes. We've got to protect forest health, water quality, the aesthetics of the valley - it all ties together.”
The Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project needs federal legislation for three goals. One is funding for 10 years of special logging projects that combine timber harvest with landscape enhancement, wildlife habitat work and recreation improvements. Seeley Lake's Pyramid Mountain Lumber Co. got one of the first such stewardship logging contracts in the nation back in 2001. Seeley Lake District Ranger Tim Love said the company's success is the model for building the bigger project.
The second part is funding for a co-generation plant that would burn the wood chips, slash and other unsellable wood for electricity and heat. The power plant might be built at Pyramid Mountain Lumber, covering most of its electricity needs and possibly lighting the community of Seeley Lake as well. And it would provide a use for the wood waste that area pulp mills are having trouble handling.
The third part would add 87,000 acres to the Bob Marshall-Scapegoat and Mission Mountains wilderness areas. But the deal also includes updates that would show where snowmobilers could access play areas and where other motorized recreation could take place.
Bob Ekey of the Wilderness Society said the project has followed the success of the Blackfoot Challenge, which brought folks from many walks of life together to manage their forestlands. If those partnerships can be replicated around Seeley Lake, they can convince Congress that the proposal's many parts have strong public support.
“The conservation community was a little wary of stewardship contracts at first,” Ekey said. “Now we think it's a good thing. This builds on a lot of history.”
Pyramid Mountain Lumber controller Loren Rose said those partnerships were also essential to helping Seeley Lake and similar communities survive the coming hard times. Noting that the project started about three years ago, Rose said the help couldn't come soon enough. He pointed to a map showing the lands involved and some of the towns and companies affected.
“I looked at the map, and at the lower lefthand corner it said Stimson Lumber,” Rose said. “They auctioned two months ago. Things have changed dramatically since this got started. We need to engage the legislative folks and say this is the right place, right time and these people can handle it.”
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com
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