Last year’s Meyers and Little Hogbackfires in Southwest Montana burned separately for two months, not stopping until the first rain and snow extinguished their growth in mid-September. Combined, these fires spread across multiple national forests, jurisdictions, wilderness areas and private lands.
We’re writing to encourage you to review and comment on the Little Hogback-Meyers Salvage Project on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. The project is intended to protect the health and safety of the public, recover the economic value of dead and dying trees and restore and replant portions of the burned landscape. Click here to send a comment from our website.
The project areas include two locations: Little Hogback is located 12 miles northwest of Philipsburg, and Meyers located 21 miles southwest of Philipsburg. Both areas are located on National Forest System lands. The salvage effort would occur on just 1,531 acres of the nearly 113,000 acres that were burned by the two fires.
We support this project because it benefits jobs in local timber communities and would help prevent dead trees from creating hazards in recreation areas. You can support it too by clicking here, and we encourage you to customize our pre-loaded letter.
While we thank the national forest for proposing this project, we think it can be improved by:
- Maximizing opportunities for salvage, especially between harvest units that currently aren’t contiguous.
- Removing hazard trees at least 150 feet on either side of affected roads, especially where there’s a threat of trees rolling downhill.
- Increasing top sizes and tree diameters in the salvage proposal to help make the project more economical.
- Ensuring roads constructed for the salvage effort can be re-used for future forest management and firefighting efforts.
Please comment on this proposed Little Hogback-Meyers Salvage Project by the June 29th deadline.
