Fires on the Rocky Mountain Front

[The following guest post is by Allen Schallenberger, wildlife consultant in Sheridan, MT.]

The Lewis and Clark National Forest website has fire maps showing the intensity of the burning on Ahorn, Amphitheatre Mountain, Conger Creek, Fool Creek, Railley Mountain, Skyland, and Turtlehead Fires of the Bob Marshall area (see here). The site goes off line Sept. 25th.

The Fool Creek Fire has a high percentage of the hottest class of burns, the kind that prevent tree growth for decades.

The area of the fires includes portions of the Lewis and Clark Rocky Mountain Division Map. the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Scapegoat Wilderness. The land is mostly unroaded from Highway 200 at Lincoln to Glacier National Park, a distance of 90 miles. There are roads on the Rocky Mountain Front approaching the Forest Boundary on the Dearborn River, Elk and Smith Creeks, Benchmark Road, Beaver Creek Road, Sun Canyon road, South and North Fork Teton, and in the Badger Two Medicine area. The latter area has a lot of old seismograph roads and some logging roads, but I believe they have been mostly closed to larger vehicles for years.

Recent articles in the Great Falls Tribune listed the fire suppression costs and reported on discussions with USFS personnel regarding the firefighting and decision-making (here, here, and here). The Fool Creek Fire Use Fire only cost $5.8 million to watch. The Ahorn Fire cost $17 million. The Skyland Fire cost $18 million.

I am familiar with all the areas as I worked there as a wildlife biologist 1963-1979. I worked in Sun Canyon on bighorn sheep, elk, mule and white-tailed deer research 1963-65, then managed the Front from Helena to the Canadian Border until 1974 when I started the first grizzly bear research in Montana outside parks. I worked the same area until the end of 1979. I traveled extensively year around on foot, snowshoes, with horses and mules, and did a lot of flying. I also put about 20,000-30,000 miles on vehicles each year covering this large area. During the grizzly research I camped 8 months of the year and traveled with horses and mules.

Probably the major forest values on the Rocky Mountain Front are water production, wildlife habitat, livestock range, and scenery for pack trips with tourists. The Front probably has the most outstanding mix of big game animals found anywhere in the nation. Included are elk, bighorn sheep, mule deer, white-tailed deer, moose, mountain goats, antelope, mountain lions, black bears, grizzly bears, some wolves. Lacking today are only wild bison, which used to be found there.

Regarding the weather, this is a very severe climate area with high winds and extreme temperature swings. Browning, MT has had a 100 degree temperature change in one day (50 F to –50 F below zero). Winds at Heart Butte have been clocked at 133 mph and Choteau has fairly frequent 90 to 100 mph winds. On the Rocky Mountain Front 40 to 50 mph winds are considered a breeze. Precipitation at Choteau is 12 inches per year, but Marias Pass and some of the Continental Divide areas get 400 inches of snow per year.

I have seen large ponderosa pines on the South Fork of the Flathead at the mouth of the White River. There are few ponderosas on the Rocky Mountain Front north of the Wolf Creek area. There are scattered, large old-growth Douglas-firs 3 to 4 feet in diameter in the Sun River area. Many have old fire scars. Reports in the Glacier area have shown fire frequencies of as little as 6 years historically.

The North Fork of the Sun River had good-sized lodgepole pines 100 or more years old. Please remember that a lot of the area has burned since 1988, and some of it two or more times. There used to be some spruce two to three feet dbh in wet areas, but they were not tall. There is a lot of subalpine fir on severe sites, and it may be crowding into whitebark pine habitat on the Front just as it is in SW Montana.

In the 1880’s RR tie cutters worked on the North Fork of the Sun River in the present Bob Marshall Wilderness. They floated the timber down the river. There was harvest of posts, poles, cabin logs, and firewood, and small family-owned mills cut timber all along the Rocky Mountain Front. I don’t believe there have ever been any large mills in the area. During the time I was there, logging occurred along Elk and Smith Creeks, Beaver Creek, the North and West Fork of the Teton River, and in the Pike Creek area near Marias Pass. There used to be a good-sized post and pole plant in Choteau/Lincoln. They told me about 10 years ago they were having trouble getting any trees except on private land and they had gone from 15 fallers to only two.

Aspen is very important along the Rocky Mountain Front for wildlife, and more could be done to keep it in the landscape. Aspen is very important for black and grizzly bears, blue and ruffed grouse, beavers, mule and white-tailed deer, and elk. I did all my spring bear trapping in aspen groves.

George Gruell, USFS, and others have documented with pictures the increasing density of forests and the encroachment of trees into bunchgrass areas. The invading tree species include limber pine, Douglas-fir, and Rocky Mountain juniper, plus some lodgepole. The bunchgrass areas include Idaho fescue, rough fescue, and bluebunch wheatgrass. Mule deer migrating to the high plains eat a lot of horizontal juniper in winter. Closer to and in the mountains deer eat taller browse species such as mountain maple, skunkbrush, common juniper, Rosa spp., Amelanchier (serviceberry), Prunus spp., Symphorocarpus (snowberry), various willows, and aspen. Browse and bunchgrass also are important for bighorns, elk, and whitetailed deer in the mountains. The limited numbers of moose eat lots of browse also. Grizzly bears in the area have 95 percent vegetative food habits. Whitebark pine nuts are important in late summer and fall, as well as russet buffaloberry, chokecherry, three species of huckleberry, and others. In early spring grizzlies depend on winter kills and dead livestock, then grass forbs and roots. The more aggressive male grizzlies in SW MT eat 80 percent large ungulates year around, and the females 50 percent.

There is a lot of very rugged country here and probably steeper and rockier than anything found in Oregon. The Front is mostly limestone country with wind-deposited volcanic soils in some areas. The area is characterized by narrow, north-south tending mountain chains with east-facing cliffs 1,000 to 3,000 feet high. Castle Reef, Sawtooth Mountain, and the Chinese Wall typify this structure. The Teton River-Birch Creek, upper Sun River, and upper Middle Fork Flathead River  watersheds where the Fool Creek Fire occurred are indeed very rugged.

I suspect that some of the $40 million plus spent on Rocky Mountain Front  fires this year could have been better spent on restoration forestry, especially prescribed burning in the spring when there is snow on the ridges to control it.

I don’t believe the Teton Pass ski run burned, only the area they were planning to expand into. Forestry practices like clearcuts which run straight up and down hills are frowned upon, unless they called ski runs.

The oil and gas industry first started working on the Front in the 1960’s and made a big mess with poorly constructed cat roads. A few of the NF District Rangers saw that as a good way to bring in lots of clearcut logging of low quality timber. I fought that successfully with others, and last year Congress passed laws putting the Rocky Mountain Front off limits to oil and gas exploration. People may now be more receptive to sensible restoration forestry.

My background includes growing up on ranches in Montana, a B.S. in Wildlife Management from SDSC at Brookings S.D. (1963) and M.S. in Fish and Wildlife Management from MSU Bozeman (1965). I have worked on the Black Hills, Custer, Gallatin, Lewis and Clark, Helena, Flathead, Lolo, and Beaverhead/Deerlodge National Forests as a wildlife research and management biologist (17 years), cattle rancher (10 years), outfitter (20 years), and I presently am a wildlife consultant. As a tourist I have had the opportunity to view forests from Alaska to Colorado, California, and Washington. I started the Jefferson River Watershed Council and served on it 7 years on the forestry riparian subcommittee. In that capacity I wrote a long paper on forest and riparian zone management with a hydro-geologist. The ability of dense conifer forests to reduce water supplies was shown in the literature.

I have studied the plants, animals, and fire history of our forests for many years and have served on a number of groups trying to improve forest management practices. Currently I am writing a beaver bulletin for Montana which hopefully will result in better beaver management. More importantly for our streams and rivers, beaver dams store large amounts of water in riparian soils adjacent to and for hundreds of yards below dams. It feeds rivers during droughts with 50 degree F. water. I am the wildlife advisor for the Montana Shooting Sports Association and the 3,750 member Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd, Inc.

I like SOS Forests. I like your point of view, and your penchant for accurate facts. Keep up the good work.

[For a map (courtesy the USFS and InciWeb) of this year’s fires on the Rocky Mountain Front, see (here, 206KB)]