Comments close soon amid concern of Rattlesnake logging, road-building, grazing

Changes contained in the proposed revision have some people worried about the potential of allowing activities like logging, road-building and livestock grazing in the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area immediately north of Missoula. Such activities have generally not occurred there since the area was designated by Congress in 1980 with a requirement of minimal active management — language aimed at preserving primitive qualities and non-motorized recreation.

Forest Supervisor Carolyn Upton sought to clarify the proposal's impact in a statement Tuesday. She wrote that the Forest Service would remain bound to the 1992 management plan for the Rattlesnake NRA, and that the division of various overlapping management layers into separate chapters in the proposal may have led people to believe the agency would open the area to previously excluded activities. Each overlapping management layer, she wrote, carries its own restrictions, meaning that any single layer's regulations were not an accurate reflection of how an area subject to multiple layers of regulation might be managed. 

Upton's statement did not specifically address logging, road-building or grazing — three activities mentioned in an opinion column by Andy Kulla, a former longtime recreation manager on the Lolo who spent 20 years overseeing the Rattlesnake NRA and wrote its 1992 management plan. But Upton wrote that "it was not the intent of the proposed action to substantially change the current management" of the Rattlesnake NRA. 

The Forest Service released a proposed action on Jan. 31 to revise the Lolo's land-management plan, commonly known as a forest plan, kicking off a 60-day comment period that closes at the end of the day Monday, April 1. After releasing and taking comments on a proposed action for revising the plan, the Forest Service will next develop alternatives for plan revision. Comments on the proposed action help the agency develop alternatives. 

The agency prefers that comments be submitted via the plan revision website at fs.usda.gov/goto/lolo/planrevision. Mailed comments can be sent to Lolo National Forest Supervisor’s Office, Attn: Lolo Plan Revision Team, 24 Fort Missoula Road, Missoula, MT, 59804. 

The proposed action and alternatives are then scrutinized through an environmental impact statement (EIS). An eventual preferred action that comes out of the EIS process, honed over a year or so of analysis and public input, may include elements of various alternatives. 

The Lolo is operating on its original forest plan from 1986 but aims to have a new plan in place in about three years. The revision process began in January 2023. That summer, a regional plan revision team spearheading the process took comments on a draft assessment of possible changes to the plan, and the Region 1 office released a list of species of conservation concern on the forest.

A forest plan is the overarching document that outlines objectives and guides decision-making by Forest Service officials. The plan is a framework for how agency officials address everything from plant and animal diversity on the landscape to how a specific area is prioritized for recreation access, logging or conservation. It can guide which areas receive more, or less, active management, and it identifies recommended wilderness and other special area designations. The plan is like a zoning code for the national forest; it does not propose, approve or deny specific projects, but it can determine activities that are prohibited in certain areas. 

The Lolo National Forest envelops the Missoula area and stretches west and southwest to Idaho, making it one of the primary recreation destinations for the region. The forest also contains critical habitat and connectivity areas for the federally protected grizzly bear and bull trout. There's also habitat for wolverine and whitebark pine, two species listed under the Endangered Species Act last year. Historically the Lolo was home to extensive commercial logging. 

The forest encompasses a portion of the Hoodoo Recommended Wilderness Area in the famed Great Burn region west of Missoula, the shape of which may soon change on the Idaho side of the RWA managed by the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest.

The so-called Nez-Clear is nearing the end of its revision process and could implement a new plan this year. The new Nez-Clear plan released late last year would reshape the Idaho side of the Hoodoo RWA to allow snowmobiles and snowbikes in areas they've been barred from since 2012, including some that directly abut the Lolo in Montana. And it would allow mountain bikes on the Stateline Trail that repeatedly crosses between the states and forests along the ridge line that separates the two — undoing a similar 2012 prohibition.

The Lolo barred winter motorized recreation from its side of the Hoodoo RWA in the 1990s, but, in contrast to the Nez-Clear's 2012 rule on bicycles, the Lolo allows bicycles on its side of the RWA. 

The Lolo also includes the popular Rattlesnake Wilderness Area immediately north of the Rattlesnake NRA. 

Kulla worried in his column that the proposed action to revise the Lolo's forest plan "ignores the history and cultural significance of the RNRA to the Missoula community" and "is a far cry from why the RNRA was designated, what Congress intended, how it was treated in the 1986 LNF Plan and what we’ve come to expect and take for granted." 

He specifically objected to the area being divided into Forest Service "management areas" 1, 2 and 3, or "backcountry," "general forest" and "concentrated use area" classifications. Each management area carries its own set of desired conditions and suitable uses and activities, as specified in a proposed action or current forest plan. 

According to the proposed action, "Backcountry areas are not suitable for timber production," but, "Vegetation management, including timber harvest, is suitable for other multiple use purposes." And, "Backcountry areas are suitable for motorized travel consistent with desired recreation opportunity spectrum settings as mapped and only on designated roads, trails, and areas." 

General forest is also "suitable for motorized travel consistent with desired recreation opportunity spectrum," according to the proposed action, and the area provides for commercial logging.

In concentrated use areas, non-commercial logging is suitable for vegetation management, and "these areas are suitable for multiple facilities designed for use by large numbers of people. Facilities may be designed for user comfort and convenience and could be highly refined." The Forest Service has an objective in concentrated use areas to build "at least one system of sustainable, designated motorized trails (e.g., motorcycle, jeep, and off-highway vehicle trails)" within 10 years. 

The southern portion of the Rattlesnake NRA is listed in the proposed action as a concentrated use area alongside the Blue Mountain Recreation Area, which includes motorized trails, the developed alpine ski areas at Snowbowl and Lookout Pass, and the area on the Montana side of Lolo Pass. 

Since 1986 the Forest Service managed the Rattlesnake NRA under its own unique management area designation, Kulla wrote, aimed at fulfilling the conservation and primitive, non-motorized recreation intents of the law that created it. And vegetation management is conducted primarily through prescribed burns, not logging or thinning, to minimize the impact of human management activities. 

"The standards emphasized a light-handed management approach and a primitive recreation experience," he wrote. "They did not permit commercial log removal, as evidenced by the last 44 years of management."

But management areas are not the only layer governing the Rattlesnake NRA in the proposed action. 

The Rattlesnake NRA is also designated as a mix of "primitive" or "semi-primitive non-motorized" on both the summer and winter recreation opportunity spectrum — a separate set of land classifications outlining the types of recreation uses appropriate in a given area. The management areas proposed for the Rattlesnake NRA allow motorized recreation only as it's "consistent with desired recreation opportunity spectrum," and the Rattlesnake NRA is designated non-motorized on the recreation opportunity spectrum in the proposed action. 

Summer semi-primitive, non-motorized areas "are free of motorized recreation travel, but mechanized travel may be present," and in winter the areas "are free of motorized transport, but mechanized transport may be present on appropriately designed and constructed routes," according to the proposed action. The setting aims to "provide opportunities for exploration, challenge, and self-reliance in a naturally appearing landscape." 

Upton clarified that the main Rattlesnake corridor was listed semi-primitive motorized not for public access but only to maintain long-standing agency access for management purposes. 

Additionally, the proposed action outlines desired conditions and suitable activities specifically in the Rattlesnake NRA as a designated area. That section still permits logging "for research, visitor safety, fuel reduction, and achieving desired vegetation conditions." But it also requires that "management, utilization, and disposal of natural resources promote, are compatible with, and do not significantly impair the purpose for which the Rattlesnake NRA was established," and that "conflicts between resources are resolved in favor of the purposes for which the Rattlesnake NRA was established."

Separately, the proposed action lists the Rattlesnake NRA as "unsuitable for timber production where harvest can occur."

Upton, in Tuesday's statement, wrote that some commenters were concerned that the Rattlesnake NRA's 1992 management plan was not included in the proposed action. 

"The revised plan provides broad, overarching guidance," she wrote. "Specific management plans, such as the RNRA and Wilderness Limits of Acceptable Change Management Direction, are not part of the plan itself. However, they will be recognized in the revised plan and continue to be used appropriately to guide management of this special place." 

She wrote that she and the plan revision team "are taking a harder look at all plan content relevant to the RNRA to ensure that the management guidance is clear and fully supportive of the law that established this area."