Tribal Forest Plan
The following story about the Salish-Kootenai Tribal Forest Plan shows how an innovative approach to forestry, unencumbered by mainstream American values, can produce management options that are truly unique. It gives a whole new meaning to "ecosystem management."
While a preferred alternative has not yet been tagged, when the final EIS is released, we'll update you on its provisions.
*************************** Char-Koosta News, October 2, 1998
Tribal Forest Management Plan nears completion
by B.L. Azure
PABLO, MT -- The Salish-Kootenai Tribal Forest Management Plan (FMP) has been years in the making and it's about to bear fruit. And because of its adaptive nature it will guide tribal forest managers well into the next century, according to the leader of the inter-disciplinary (ID) team charged with creating the document.
Team leader David Rockwell said recently that the ID team is putting the final touches on the draft Environmental Impact Statement for internal review by mid-November. Following the review is a tentatively scheduled December presentation of the administrative document to the Tribal Council for their comments, suggested changes and blessing.
Once okayed by the Council, the FMP will be ready for a 60-day public review and comment period beginning in mid-January, Rockwell said. What the public will have to comment on is a forest management document that is "in some respects, a significant departure from the way forests were managed in the past," he said. The departure is part of a national forest management philosophy that recognizes other forest values besides resource production and also recognizes and attempts to remedy the effects of fire suppression in the forests.
"The way we look at forests is significantly different under the eco system management approach," Rockwell said. "The main focus under the eco-system approach becomes restoring the natural structure to the forest that have been lost through fire exclusion, silviculture and past forest practices. It is a broader view of the landscape that focuses on the diversity of the forest structure."
In order to restore the natural structure, forest managers will attempt to mimic Mother Nature's "natural disturbance regimes" as much as possible, Rockwell said. The main natural disturbance regime is fire, which, along with silviculture practices, will be used to get forests back to a more healthy situation. Years of fire suppression has created dense forests with thick underbrush that are out of balance with their natural development. Many of the nation's forests are ripe for catastrophic fires that can render forest lands sterile for years before recovering.
Through eco-system management, tribal forest managers hope to restore historic forest structures that are stable and sustainable. The FMP offers the Tribal Council five management alternatives to manage tribal forests. The FMP inter-disciplinary team has not picked a preferred alternative.
Full restoration would attempt to restore, to the maximum extent possible, conditions that existed prior to European settlement while optimizing historic wildlife habitat and diversity while maintaining a natural appearing landscape.
Modified restoration would restore the forest to more natural conditions and to allow natural processes to function in the forest.
Restoration with an emphasis on commodity production would maximize tribal income and employment by emphasizing wood products and production through the use of intensive forest management methods, while attempting to restore natural or pre-European conditions.
No action would be a continuance of forest management practices that existed under the old forest management plan that was affective from 1982 to 1991.
Custodial would maintain or enhance forest health and tribal employment opportunities through low intensity, custodial forest management, i.e., low-volume salvage logging.
Tribal forest management plans are usually redone every 10 years, Rockwell said. However, the latest plan can serve well longer than that because of its adaptive nature that allows management adjustments to reach goals if projections aren't realized. "It's not written in stone," he said. "The goals may stay the same but how we get there may be altered."
To reach the goals through management strategies the ID team looked at the kind of forest structure that existed prior to European settlement - the conditions under which plant and animal communities evolved; analyzed the conditions that exist today; asked what activities are sustainable and desirable; and developed objectives to maintain and restore a forest structure that more closely resembles the structure in which the eco-systems evolved.
In developing the plan the ID team used spacial analysis, computer modeling and the Geographic Information System (satellite photos). They also used the Integrated Resource Management approach of focusing on processes and relationships between resources rather than focusing on the individual resource rather than focus on forest structure rather than commodity output. The hope is to restore the forest to a condition that more closely resembles pre-contact forests.
The ID team is comprised of people specializing in silviculture, plant ecology, fire/fuels, landscape, wildlife biology, hydrology, fisheries, recreation, soils and range, Salish and Kootenai culture committees and computerized mapping.
Their goals are to: strengthen tribal sovereignty and self-sufficiency through good forest management; manage forest eco-systems to include natural processes and to balance cultural, spiritual, economic, social and environmental values; adopt a process which accommodates changes in tribal values and resources; facilitate tribal member involvement in forest stewardship; provide sustained yield of forest products and maintain or enhance forest health; develop options for managing land use conflicts; provide perpetual economic benefits of labor, profit and products for local communities; manage forested eco-systems to protect and enhance biological diversity; provide a variety of natural areas that tribal members can use for solitude, cultural activities and recreational pursuits; work cooperatively with adjacent landowners and federal agencies to minimize cumulative impacts; protect human life, property and forest resources through fire suppression and fuels management; and to comply with tribal and federal laws.
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