By Michael Wright Chronicle Staff Writer
Sep 6, 2017 - bozemandailychronicle.com
Montana officials want to cut down some trees on state land south of Bozeman, but a group of locals who oppose the project want to pay the state to leave it untouched.
A group called Save Our Gallatin Front will try to outbid timber companies when the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation begins accepting bids for its Limestone West timber project sometime next year. DNRC is proposing logging on roughly 600 acres of trust lands west of Mount Ellis.
Opponents of the project have applied for a “conservation license in lieu of timber sale,” a rarely used procedure that allows people to bid against timber companies for all or part of a timber sale.
Jeff Yates, a member of the group, said they want to stop the project because the area is relatively undeveloped, important for wildlife and nice to look at.
“This is a very sensitive area,” Yates said. “It is one of the last roadless areas going north.”
DNRC first proposed logging the school trust lands in the Limestone Creek and Nichols Creek drainages in 2016. The project would include some thinning and clear cutting. The state says it will bring in money and remove dead trees.
Sonya Germann, DNRC’s forest management bureau chief, said the project will consist of between 600 and 650 acres.
Residents of nearby subdivisions have opposed the work since the very first rumblings of the project. They worry about the impact to wildlife and the potential for clear cuts to mar back porch views for everyone in the Gallatin Valley.
Over the last year, DNRC has been working on an environmental analysis of the project, including watershed and wildlife studies in the area. The document is a precursor to a final decision and taking bids on the project. Germann said they hope to release the document next spring.
She said much of the field work is done and staff will spend the next few months analyzing their data. But the opposition’s desire for a conservation license has added another layer of work for the analysis.
The procedure, enacted by the Montana Legislature in 1999, has only been used once before. On a timber sale in northwestern Montana, a conservation license was purchased to keep 1.2 acres from being logged for 10 years. The group trying to stop Limestone West is the first to attempt to buy a conservation license to stop an entire project — all 600 acres of it.
But the law doesn’t say how long such a license should last, and because it’s used so infrequently, DNRC hasn’t dealt with this type of situation before. Germann said they are struggling with how long this particular conservation license should last and when they should offer that information publicly — either before or after analysis is complete.
“We’re still trying to figure it out,” she said.
Yates said Save Our Gallatin Front wants the license to last for around 50 years. He said they would consider suing the state if DNRC offers a term that is too short, but he declined to say what they would consider to be a minimum length of time.
He said they haven’t started raising money for their effort to outbid the timber company yet because they want to wait until they know how long the license will last.
But the group has been trying to get more people involved in their campaign, which could broaden their potential donor base. They held a public meeting last week that Yates said was attended by roughly 180 people. They have also scheduled a series of guided hikes into the project area.