From the Wednesday, May 24, 2006 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
The examination is under way.
People milled about the room, slowly scrutinizing the oversized maps on the wall that represent the Flathead National Forest’s long-range forest-plan proposal.
“People seem to be moving to their particular areas of interest,” said Flathead Supervisor Cathy Barbouletos at the forest’s first forest-plan open house Monday at the WestCoast Kalispell Center Hotel. “It’s either an issue, or a place that they are usually interested in.”
The maps are the meat of a plan that is based largely on strategic goals for different parts of the forest. Some describe it as “zoning” with “desired conditions” on the landscape. It’s a big difference from the far more descriptive and detailed forest plans that were enacted across the country in the mid-1980s. Those plans entailed voluminous environmental-impact statements that attempted to predict the effects of forest-plan implementation.
Under rules adopted by the Forest Service last year, the new plans are slimmer and simpler, and they are being developed on a far more expeditious schedule.
. . . the Flathead proposal includes 141,243 acres of “recommended wilderness,” a substantial increase over the current plan’s 98,080 acres. Most of the additional acreage is from the inclusion of about 60,000 acres in the North Fork Flathead drainage, around Thompson-Seton and Tuchuck mountains. The rest is accounted for with proposed expansions around the Bob Marshall, Spotted Bear and Great Bear wilderness areas.
Read the entire article . . .