We support the Pintler Face landscape project

The Anaconda Sportsmen Club has been active for decades in the development of Forest Service projects in the Big Hole watershed. In 2016 we engaged in the development of the Pintler Face landscape project which would affect a substantial area between Thompson Creek and the Mount Haggin Game range. This is the most comprehensive Forest Service vegetation treatment on this landscape in 20 years. It involves clear cutting, thinning, burning, and access management.

Members of our club and other conservation organizations participated for a number of years in analysis and field review of proposed treatments and infrastructure changes. We were concerned with affects on security cover for wildlife, public access, fisheries, and reduction of wildfire risks. We worked with Forest Service (FS)  professionals, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP) biologists and conservation organizations.

The result is the Pintler Face project – approved in 2021 – which provides four timber sales, all of which have been sold, one with harvest completed. These projects will affect elk security conver, public access and water quality for fisheries. Based on our conversations with FS and FWP biologists and our knowledge of this landscape we support the project and its affects on these resources. The timber proposed for harvest is over mature and needs harvest. Past harvest units in the area successfully regenerated and we expect the same for the new cuts.

Pintler Face has benefits. The existing road system will see long needed maintenance including culvert replacement and upgrades that will eliminate fish passage obstacles. This will compliment the work of FWP to restore cutthroat trout to historic habitats. This project inventoried and documents the closure of dozens of miles of roads built and used for timber harvest activities more than 50 years ago. With collaboration between FWP, FS, and local organizations like ours we identified and physically closed these roads decades ago. It is a major reason that this area has quality hunting opportunities and healthy elk populations. This project does not create new permanent roads but does provide long overdue upgrades.

Eighteen months into implementation the Alliance For the Wild Rockies (AFWR) and the Native Ecosystem Council (NEC) filed lawsuits which suspended all activities on the Pintler Face Project. Their lawsuits focus on the Project’s effect on grizzlies, wolverines, and lynx. FS biologists evaluated the Projects effects on these species and made appropriate decisions. The validity of their work and decisions will be evaluated by the court. We continue to support the Project.

Grizzlies are documented on this landscape. To get there they negotiated the open spaces and highways from the Northern Ecosystem to the Big Hole. A bear capable of that journey will adapt to this habitat, even with the proposed clear cuts. Recent documentation on wolverine occupancy in the Project area indicates extensive occupancy most of which is at elevations higher than the proposed activities and adjacent to lands with past extensive timber harvest.

Documentation on lynx occupancy and adaptability to this area seems to be insufficient. We support additional research on lynx prevalence and adaptability to this landscape. The proposed harvest is on stands of over mature lodgepole that are collapsing. Doing nothing means these stands will become difficult to impossible to negotiate by most species. Those conditions will persist until a landscape changing fire removes the fuels on a broad scale. It is doubtful that those results will be better for lynx than the proposed treatments.

In the past 25 years the Pintlar and Pioneer ranges have experienced four landscape changing fires. These fires produce dangerous air quality events that often last for months. They have created erosion issues, burned with an intensity that will take decades for recovery, changed run off and temperatures in streams, and reduced the quantity and diversity of recreational opportunities for the public. The results have not been beneficial for lynx, wolverine, or grizzlies. Plintlar Face will reduce the risks of repeating those catastrophic fires, produce a healthier forest, upgrade the transportation system, produce forest products and jobs, and provide a safer more usable landscape for public use.

Gary Ouldhouse is the president of the Anaconda Sportsmen Club. Chris Marchion is a board member Anaconda Sportsmen Club.