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Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future

Northwestern Montana forest provides Capitol’s 79-foot-tall Christmas spruce

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Trucker Larry Spiekermeier pulled into the nation’s capital a little after 4 a.m. Monday, delivering his 79-foot-tall cargo. Photo: U.S. Forest Service

Grown to the height of a high-rise on northwestern Montana’s remote Kootenai National Forest, the U.S. Capitol Christmas tree reached its destination Monday after a 3,460-mile journey across the country.

Trucker Larry Spiekermeier made his delivery before dawn, after a stop Sunday at Joint Base Andrews, where members of the U.S. Air Force helped to unwrap the tree before the final few miles of its travels.

On Monday, a crane hoisted the tree into place on the west side of the Capitol, where a lighting ceremony – led by Montana Sen. Jon Tester – is planned for Dec. 6. [Read more…]

Western wildfires: Scientists know the answers, panelists say, but will citizens take action?

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Many in the audience of nearly 200 Tuesday night remained after the discussion to engage with panelists and one another. Photo: Katy Spence/Treesource

Earth is a flammable planet. It’s been that way for 320 million years, since vegetation first took hold on the land.

“So fire is this natural phenomenon,” said Phil Higuera. “But when it interacts with humans, it is truly a disaster.”

Thus the eight experts on everything from insurance to incident command who gathered Tuesday night in Missoula to reflect on the 2017 wildfire season – and on how, after 320 million years, humans can learn to live with fire. [Read more…]

Forest restoration project saved homes, but can it be duplicated across the West?

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This Aug. 28, 2017 photo from Inciweb shows a wildfire near Sisters, Ore. A few months before the fire, the U.S. Forest Service and local environmental, logging and recreational interests thinned part of the overgrown forest, creating a buffer zone around Sisters. Photo: Inciweb

Folks in Sisters, Oregon, are crediting an auspiciously timed collaborative forest-thinning project with saving homes – and some are even saying, their community – this summer when a wildfire marched their way.

And while experts near and far agree the Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project slowed the fire and gave firefighters a chance at containment, they wonder how often and widespread the collaborative project can be replicated in Western forests that historically burned at regular intervals.

In the case of Sisters, the restoration work happened last spring and included thinning trees and brush as well as prescribed burns. The intent was to create a buffer zone around the tourist town, and it worked precisely as intended. [Read more…]

SmartLam to quadruple CLT production at new northwestern Montana site

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Montana Gov. Steve Bullock tours SmartLam with co-owner Casey Malmquist earlier this year. Photo courtesy of SmartLam.

SmartLam Technologies Group, the first U.S. manufacturer of cross-laminated timber products, intends to quadruple its production of CLT and develop new types of engineered wood products with an expansion into the former Weyerhaeuser lumber mill site in Columbia Falls, Montana.

Weyerhaeuser shuttered the mill in August 2016, seven months after merging with Plum Creek Timber Co., and put the 40-acre site up for sale this past summer. SmartLam has signed a long-term lease on part of the acreage with the new owners, Columbia Rising LLC, which plans to redevelop the remainder of the site into a rail-served industrial park.

The move, planned no later than Jan. 1, 2018, will accommodate SmartLam’s headquarters as well as its expanding manufacturing facilities. The company anticipates employing 75 workers by the end of 2019. [Read more…]

Headwaters Economics: Communities have many tools to reduce wildfire risk

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Editor’s note: A timely new report from Bozeman, Montana-based Headwaters Economics explores how communities and counties in that state can learn from one another’s land-use planning strategies – as well as best practices in other states – to reduce the risks and costs of homebuilding in the wildland-urban interface. Here is the group’s introduction to the report, with links to the executive summary and full report.

Across Montana — like most of the West — wildfires are getting bigger, lasting longer, and causing more damage to homes and property, as the severity of the severity of the 2017 wildfire season demonstrated. This trend can only be expected to continue under a warmer, drier climate and as more homes are built in at-risk locations (known as the wildland-urban interface, or WUI).

Land use planning is an important tool to reducing risk, but few Montana counties have fully integrated wildfire into their land use planning programs. [Read more…]