Forest Watch
Forestry and Roadless Areas
The Yaak Valley Forest Council advocates for National Forest management that supports wildlife, old-growth forests, and a healthy Yaak River watershed. For endangered species, we campaign for a climate refuge in the Yaak and the protection of wildlife corridors, roadless areas, and core grizzly bear habitat. For Lincoln County residents, we work for bear-safe communities, the co-existence of people and wildlife, and responsible outdoor recreation in the Yaak and across the Kootenai National Forest. Since 1997, the Yaak Valley Forest Council has brought over a million dollars into Lincoln County through forest and habitat restoration projects that preserve and protect the wild Yaak.
Monitoring
Our Forest Watch team is the eyes, ears, and voice for conservation on the ground. The Yaak Valley Forest Council follows the U.S. Forest Service’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) steps on each project from scoping to environmental analysis and the draft record of decision. We act to provide input and correct course when a project plan does not take climate change into consideration or provide adequate protection for wildlife and old-growth forests.
The goal of this monitoring program is to bring about forest management in the wild Yaak that sustains the health of our watersheds, wildlife, local communities, and local economies for generations to come.
The Yaak Valley Forest Council works on the 2.2 million-acre Kootenai National Forest, the entire Yaak watershed, and in the areas surrounding it. Since our program's inception in 1997, the Yaak Valley Forest Council has monitored project areas totaling more than 1.1 million acres. This vast acreage is a testament to our organization's dedicated field conservation efforts over the intervening decades.
Black Ram Project
In 2019, the Kootenai National Forest proposed a major logging project in the Yaak ecosystem that would commercially log more than 4,000 acres, including:
- clearcutting 2,011 acres (more than 3 square miles), including one clearcut 293 acres in size, about ½ a square mile,
- logging 950+ acres of old-growth and mature forest,
- removing 57 million board feet of commercial timber,
- Bulldozing nearly a mile of new and permanent road through old forest and reconstructing or maintaining 90.3 miles of road.
The Kootenai National Forest asserts that the project is needed to “manage the forest stands in the Project Area to maintain or improve their resilience to disturbances such as drought, insect and disease outbreaks, and wildfires.” Yet logging and clearcutting to create more plantations often worsen wildfire risks by leaving slash and broken branches, increasing human access, and removing fire-resistant trees. About 60% of the project area is outside (and downwind of) the “wildland-urban interface,” and miles from homes or other structures.
Black Ram is one of five massive logging projects, covering more than 300,000 acres, stacked on top of one another on the Kootenai National Forest’s western side.
The Forest Service has admitted the 25 or fewer grizzlies left in the relatively isolated Yaak Valley ecosystem, already threatened by unsustainable logging across the Canadian border, are likely to be adversely affected. The project will do so in part by increasing road density standards above thresholds meant to protect bears for up to 10 years. With more roads and disturbance come more opportunities for human-bear conflicts, with often deadly consequences for grizzlies. Bear experts in the U.S. and Canada have raised the alarm about the project.
Old and mature forests, and the soil they nourish and that nourishes them, are champions of carbon storage and could play a key role in buffering against the threat of catastrophic climate change. Logging old forests, as proposed at Black Ram, significantly reduces the rate at which the forest stores carbon. Wildfires, which the Black Ram and similar projects purport to prevent, annually cause less damage to carbon storage than does logging.
Climate and forest ecology experts have criticized the Kootenai National Forest’s analysis of the Black Ram project as verging on climate denial and noted that the project conflicts with President Biden’s call for federal agencies to aggressively tackle the climate crisis.
YVFC Board Chair Rick Bass describing Black Ram's ancient forest: Outside Unit 72 - Big Sky Journal
YVFC was recently recognized for our efforts to halt the disastrous Black Ram Project and protect ancient old-growth spruce and larch in Celebrating Old Growth: A Conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Macfarlane, and David Haskell. Click on the link below to watch a recording of the discussion and learn more about old-growth forests, their global importance, and the great minds and thought leaders advocating for better old-growth forest research, understanding, and protection.
To learn more about how you can help YVFC stop the Black Ram Project, follow the link below.
Climate Refuge Documents
Click here to learn more about part of our proposed Climate Refuge by reading the Black Ram Project Review prepared by Herb Hammond and the Silva Forest Foundation.
THRIVE
The Yaak Valley Forest Council’s THRIVE program is designed to research and monitor vegetative response to land management treatments with an aim to create healthier, more resilient grizzly bear and lynx habitat. Identifying which treatments are most effective at promoting ideal vegetative conditions for wildlife persistence will contribute to the recovery of these endangered species in the Kootenai National Forest.
