Firefighters, Conservationists Clash Over Montana Forest Management

(TNS) — Lincoln Volunteer Fire Rescue Chief Zach Muse took to social media recently venting frustration and sparking discussion over conditions that he said have hampered firefighters’ ability to distinguish wildfires and put the public at risk.

The conditions Muse referred to were caused by lawsuits from two conservation groups.

But members of two conservation groups who advocate against logging projects and prescribed burns defended their actions, saying they’re in the best interests of the forest and wildlife.

The Black Mountain fire 6 miles northwest of Lincoln burned through 182 acres and had 87% containment as of Aug. 9. The fire is now under the direction of the federal government. Weeks earlier, the Horse Gulch fire northeast of Helena burned through 15,167 acres from Lewis and Clark County into Broadwater County. The cost to fight Black Mountain is now at $3 million and Muse thinks the final tab could hit $5 million.

The U.S. Forest Service has tried to do work in Montana’s wilderness, but litigants stopped it, officials said, but the litigants said it impacts wildlife on a negative level.

“There’s a ton of fuel in there that needs to burn off,” Muse wrote earlier this month on the department’s Facebook page. “Sure would have been nice to have gotten to log it and thin it out some, create some jobs, get some lumber and make it a healthy forest. And maybe make it safer for those of us that live here.”

“Thanks for telling us how to manage our woods from behind your computer and lawyers,” he wrote, reflecting a long-simmering public debate over forest management argued by many.

His posting brought a lot of comments of support.

“Should make the litigators fight a fire,” one person wrote.

Some people blamed “green groups” and the forest service for mismanaging forests.

Muse took partial exception to that.

“Uninformed” people blame the forest service, he said. According to Muse, conservation litigators are to blame for the densely filled and inaccessible forests.

Dead trees and other fuels cause crews to have to “crawl” or hike to wildfire locations with little access to open pathways, Muse said.

The Lincoln fire crew responded the first day to the Black Mountain fire, but could not go into the fire because it was “too dangerous.” Instead, the crew stayed below the fire and Muse helped with evacuations in the affected area.

Since July 1, his department received roughly 15 wildland calls, but last year they only received about 10 calls all summer.

Muse said the litigators sit behind a computer all day to collect a paycheck and they only start conversations in a courtroom.

As Muse went on to describe the perilous conditions crews work with during wildfires he said, “thanks Michael Garrity.” The conditions put lives in danger, Muse said, and for litigators to understand that he said they’d have to be willing to learn. “They don’t want to.”

The fire chief said not all wildlife conservation groups are not willing to learn and be informed, but it was two main groups, Garrity’s and the Native Ecosystems Council (NEC).

Michael Garrity, executive director of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, a conservation group that has sued and won over proposed forest projects it believes will harm wildlife and the environment, brushed Muse’s comments aside.

“He doesn’t know what he is talking about,” Garrity said about Muse’s comments. He added that there was no scientific evidence backing up claims that logging and prescribed burns help environments.

In terms of access to fires, Garrity noted the Forest Service does have smoke jumpers.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies website says its “mission is to secure the ecological integrity of the Wild Rockies Bioregion through citizen empowerment and the application of conservation biology, sustainable economic models and environmental law.”

Sara Johnson, director of the NEC, was mentioned as another person who has taken legal action to argue against U.S. Forest Service decisions by Emily Platt, U.S. Forest Service supervisor for the Helena Lewis and Clark National Forest.

Platt said the arguments between litigators and fire officials spanned decades because “we just have a really different perspective.”

She said she has respect for Garrity and Johnson but disagrees with their views on how things work in the forest. Platt mentioned a project the Forest Service is working on and would be a project involving over 2 million acres in the forest and prescribed burns, which she said the two litigators could help gather data supporting wildlife.

Garrity said of Platt: “I’m not going to waste time meeting with people that are going to lie to me. She just wants to spend as much money as possible to grow their budget.”

He said the logging projects and prescribed burns are for her personal gain and Johnson said, “Emily wants to burn the whole Lewis and Clark forest down.”

Johnson said they do it for public safety, but she does not believe it helps at all, including wildlife. Regarding Muse’s claim that the litigators don’t care about public safety or firefighter safety, she asked, “how many people are killed in wildfires?”

On Aug. 5, events were held in the Helena area in remembrance of the 13 firefighters who died in the Mann Gulch fire 75 years ago. During the Horse Gulch fire, a pilot died July 10 trying to scoop water to fight the blaze.

“I speak for wildlife … it’s ignored by the pyromaniacs and these people just like to burn, it’s like a cult,” Johnson said.

She cited how deforestation and prescribed burns hurt wildlife more than help it, while fueling climate change. Johnson said through studies, temperature rises in areas of deforestation and wolverines for example, she said are temperature sensitive.

Johnson said they can’t live in places that are not within their temperature range. Garrity added that the litigants’ beliefs are based on scientific facts, while Platts and Muse’s are not.

Platt said scientific facts are a full body of literature, not pieces and said prescribed burns help through proven science.

A lot of the ways fire has behaved in recent years, including the 2024 fire season could have been prevented if litigators stayed out of the way, Muse said.

Muse said he knew the fire season would be bad this year due to zero snowpack and drought.

“They’re just looking for ways to screw America,” he said because according to Muse, litigators are people that sit behind loopholes and collect a paycheck.

©2024 the Independent Record (Helena, Mont.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.