KVRI backs Boulder Creek Restoration Project

Board members of the Kootenai Valley River Initiative (KVRI) met on Tuesday, Jan. 10 to discuss any concerns regarding the proposal of the Boulder Creek Restoration Project, as well as to examine other land management projects that are being proposed in the Kootenai Valley over the next five to 10 years.

The KVRI has worked hand-in-hand with Idaho Panhandle National Forests (IPNF) in order to formulate the proposal for the Boulder Creek Restoration Project (BCRP), which was shared with members of the community in the form of a scoping letter sent out in early December. In the letter, the IPNF welcomes comments from the public in order to identify potential issues and concerns regarding the project.

Project leader Doug Nishek, who works as a forester for the IPNF, emphasizes that the project is still very much in the development phase. “Those wanting to provide input or ask questions should do so sooner rather than later,” he says, “so that their input can be integrated into the project design.”

One of the primary objectives of the BCRP is to manage forest stands in a way that will improve their resilience to drought, disease and wildfires. After intensive scrutiny of the roughly 40,000 acre Boulder Creek watershed, which is located near the Montana border approximately 8 miles east of Naples and comprised of a number of different forest types, Nishek and his colleagues identified specific areas that are especially prone to wildfires. They paid special attention to the northern section of the project area, which is defined as a Wildland-Urban Interface — an area where forested wildlands are adjacent to human development — and concluded that “this area has continuous stands of trees with high fuel loadings (dead trees, branches and forest litter)...[and] when wildfire(s) occur in these fuel types, these conditions could cause a severe fire that is difficult to control or could spread onto private lands to the north.” Creating openings in these crowded stands is one of the ways that foresters seek to mitigate the forest’s propensity for fire.

One of the mitigating actions proposed by Nishek during the meeting was the commercial thinning of overstocked old-growth ponderosa pine stands, many of which feature congested understories made up of younger douglas firs and lodgepole pines that create fuel ladders, increase the risk of disease and compete with the old-growth trees for water and nutrients.

Increasing viable grizzly bear habitat is another main focus of the BCRP, as the federal agency is required to meet the standards of the Grizzly Bear Access Amendment for the Boulder Bear Management Unit by 2019. In effect, meeting those standards means reducing the amount of motorized roads in the area, which, according to Nishek, is what most concerns Boundary County locals. For that reason, the IPNF is doing its best to meet the habitat needs of the grizzly bear while taking into consideration the needs of people in the community.

As it stands now, there is only one road slated for decommission — one that, according to Nishek, has been impassable for at least 20 years. Others will likely be stored, which means removing culverts and blocking off the roads so they remain impassable for at least ten years. These stored roads would remain part of the Forest transportation system and could be reopened in the future.

Maps detailing the exisiting road system in the project area as well as proposed actions to those roads can be found on the U.S. Forest Service’s website, which features a wealth of additional information regarding the BCRP: www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=44066.

Other objectives mentioned in the proposal include: maintaining recreational sites and improving area trails, improving fish passage in the creek and treating noxious weeds.

KVRI Coordinator Patty Perry says that the collaborative group will continue to host public meetings as the restoration project continues to take shape.

“This is only the beginning,” Perry says. “It’s just in the infant stages of saying, ‘we have a plan to do something up there, these are the kinds of things we think it needs, what do you all think?’ We want the community to be able to look at what’s planned, understand why it’s planned and have the opportunity to comment on that.”

The next step, according to Perry, is for the KVRI forestry committee to hold a meeting in February, during which the responses received by the IPNF can be reviewed and those comments can help guide project development as it moves forward.