Cabins in the Woods Raise Conservation Concerns

The Flathead National Forest’s (FNF) proposal last spring to develop a pod of rental cabins on a remote, infrequently visited drainage within the Spotted Bear Ranger District, which serves as a portal to the Bob Marshall Wilderness, triggered a flood of opposition and prompted land managers to sideline the project before ever making a formal decision.

The proposal called for building four rental cabins at the Bunker Creek Campground, located about eight miles southeast of the Spotted Bear Ranger Station, along roads open year round to public motorized use but which are accessible only by snowmobiles in winter months. The area receives light use during summer months, according to FNF officials, while visitation has continued to decline following the 2015 Bear Creek Fire that scorched the area.

“We are excited to meet the public’s need for a road-accessible cabin rental that will allow a variety of users to experience the Spotted Bear Ranger District,” wrote Scott Snelson, the district ranger at Spotted Bear.

By building out the existing overnight amenities at Bunker Creek, Snelson reasoned in his proposal, it would disperse concentrations of visitors in more heavily visited segments of the forest and redirect them into an underutilized area, while also appealing to a broader range of mid-level adventurers due to its ease of accessibility and the addition of overnight accommodations.

Still, opponents said the enhanced development would increase visitation, and it would do so in the middle of some of the FNF’s most dense grizzly bear and carnivore habitat, as well as disrupt the winter ranges of species including mountain goats and elk.

“You are creating a destination resort in the most inappropriate place and it is sure to be used by commercial operations, snowmobile clubs, [and] mountain biking organizations,” wrote Chris Servheen, a retired grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

Other opponents emphasized — and empathized with — the inherent challenge of balancing the desire for human recreation with potential wildlife impacts, but noted that the cumulative pressure could yield disastrous results.

“For most species in the areas surrounding Bunker Park, it is unlikely that the cabin development and resulting recreation will have population level impacts; however, as human use of the area increases, there is a very real possibility of increased human-wildlife conflicts,” according to a letter submitted by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) biologists Jessy Coltrane and Leo Rosenthal. “Human-bear conflicts are of major concern, as they can result in human injury and/or death, as well as increased bear mortality. Grizzly bears are common in the Bunker Creek drainage and surrounding areas. Building rental cabins will make Bunker Park a recreational destination for local residents and out-of-state visitors. While bears generally try to avoid interactions with people, increased recreational use in the area will likely result in increased negative encounters with both black and grizzly bears.”

Even with the proposal on the back burner, the feedback it generated illuminates a flashpoint at the intersection of surging recreational demand and wildlife resource conservation, as well as the challenge of accommodating the explosion of human use while mitigating the deleterious effects to natural resources.

Moreover, a public records request by a pair of conservation organizations —the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) and Wild Montana — revealed that the Bunker Creek proposal was part and parcel of a nascent plan to expand the inventory of rental cabins into other forest districts, including dozens of additional sites identified at Spotted Bear. Those sites included popular launching points into the Bob Marshall Wilderness, including Meadow Creek Trailhead, Spotted Bear Campground, South Creek Campground, Crossover Campground, and Beaver Creek Campground.

“In order to adapt to changing use recreational pressures … the Flathead National Forest is looking to develop several cabin rental opportunities on the Spotted Bear Ranger District,” according to a September 2020 summation of the proposal from Snelson to the National Forest Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service’s nonprofit fundraising partner. “There are currently 29 sites that have been identified as potential opportunities on the Spotted Bear RD. There is potential to expand the cabin system to other areas on the Forest and even throughout the Montana region to create a hut-to-hut system.”

The records request returned emails and other documents that explore the possibility of developing “villages” of rental cabins, including cost assessments, revenue projections, funding sources, and possible sources of raw building materials.

Those discussions raised a red flag for Sarah Lundstrum, NPCA’s Glacier Program Manager, particularly because the FNF presented its Bunker Creek cabin proposal as unique, and not integral to a more extensive plan for forest-wide recreational development that includes new infrastructure in sensitive grizzly bear habitat.

“We are not opposed to recreational development, and in fact support appropriate development in appropriate places as long as there’s transparency about the scope of what’s being proposed,” Lundstrum said in an interview. “But what we’re learning is that the Bunker Creek cabin proposal was not just a one-off. It represents a wholesale change in how the Forest is managing recreation, and it deserves a full-scale analysis. We need to be talking about this in a holistic fashion instead of through a piecemeal approach.”

Indeed, the determination by Snelson that the Bunker Creek cabins were exempt from the highest standards of environmental review sparked immediate and intense scrutiny from conservation organizations and individual members of the public, as well as from within the ranks of other state and federal agencies.

“I have made a preliminary determination that this proposal falls within a category of actions listed in the Forest Service National Environmental Policy Handbook that are excluded from documentation in an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement,” Snelson wrote in a March 9 scoping letter, prompting opponents to wonder why the project was being spared from a more rigorous environmental analysis.

The groups who responded with extensive comment opposing the use of a categorical exclusion included NPCA and Montana Wild, which submitted the records request, as well as the Swan View Coalition, the Glacier-Two Medicine Alliance, and numerous individuals.

“The Forest’s attempt to side-step necessary scientific and social analysis leaves the public uninformed about the range, nature, and scope of the full project and its multitude of impacts on the environment,” Lundstrum wrote in a letter to Snelson. “The public cannot fully play a role in the public process of forest management if the Forest Service fails to provide us with necessary information regarding these public resources. Beyond the need for a robust public process for these proposed cabins, the District Ranger has discussed with some parties the possibility of expanded development of a series of rental yurts or additional cabins in the Spotted Bear/Hungry Horse Reservoir area. If these cabins are truly just the beginning of potential development for this area, then the full scope of development needs to be disclosed and assessed as one project, not assessed piecemeal or not assessed at all via [categorical exclusions].”

Gordon Ash, a retired district ranger who worked on the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest and now lives in Kalispell, said the development of cabins on the Spotted Bear Ranger District and the potential for use during winter months would lead to motorized “intrusions” into the east side Swan Range that is currently off limits to snowmobile activity.

“Who will be patrolling winter activity?” Ash wrote to Snelson. “Forest Law Enforcement cannot even address summer activity issues let alone a new chapter on Spotted Bear Ranger District. Is there going to be a Spotted Bear Winter Ranger? Will there be Spotted Bear housing for that Winter Ranger or Law Enforcement Officer? What is that cost? New play areas, new fresh powder, new snowmobile technology — they will come. It is already proven.”

Keith Hammer, chair of the Swan View Coalition, said the development on land adjacent to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area deserved “the full and public environmental analysis required by law.”

“If you think you can build rental cabins at Bunker Park without increasing the human use capacity of the area, then you must also think you can do so at other developed and undeveloped campgrounds in the Spotted Bear area — such as Beaver Creek, South Creek Trailhead, and other Wilderness trailheads that already have pit toilets, fire rings, and food storage lockers,” Hammer wrote to Snelson. “You need to conduct a full and public environmental review of such a program and explain to the public how this is in keeping with the Flathead’s promise to keep grizzly bear habitat conditions and security at 2011 levels and to not arbitrarily increase human use capacity via developed recreation sites.”

Beth Pargman, a spokesperson for the Flathead National Forest, said officials have put the Bunker Creek proposal as well as the broader connected-cabin discussion on hold in order to thoroughly review all input. The cabin-rental proposal was born of the agency’s recognition that its current cabin rental program is growing in popularity, along with nearly every other corner of the 2.4 million-acre Flathead National Forest, and that expanding the existing program has the potential to create new recreation opportunities and new revenue streams.

But pressing pause on the proposal doesn’t solve the need to respond to the growing demand for recreational opportunities, which could include expanding the FNF’s cabin rental program in the future.

Bill Mulholland, the FNF’s Tally Lake Ranger District, manages a segment of the forest that receives a lower concentration of recreational use than other districts, including developed recreational areas that might be suitable for rental cabins. A current Capital Improvement Project (CIP) list composed by the FNF includes Ashley Lake, west of Kalispell, as a strong candidate for cabin rental sites, as well as Sylvia Lake, Round Meadow and Tally Lake Campground.

“It’s too early to say where the Flathead National Forest is going with its cabin rental program, especially because funding sources remain difficult to come by, but if we do move forward with a forest-wide cabin program we’re going to do it right and offer ample opportunity for public comment and a comprehensive assessment that addresses the concerns that have been raised,” Mulholland said in an interview. 

“Some of the lessons learned from Spotted Bear are that each cabin and site would have its own unique set of issues and concerns, and every cabin will be scrutinized or analyzed,” Mulholland continued. “We want to put cabins where it makes the most sense. We are going to put them where people want to use them, but each site might have different use restrictions. Some might be motorized, some might be walk-in only, but that would be determined on a case-by-case basis.”