A proposed logging project in a heavily-used network of trails near Whitefish has residents there mobilizing to make sure that recreation is considered as part of the plan. In October, the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation announced plans for a timber sale on state school trust land encompassing the Spencer Lake area, three miles west of Whitefish.
According to the DNRC, work on the sale layout could begin next summer, with actual thinning taking place in the late summer or fall of 2011. But although the proposed sale is in its very early stages, some recreational users of the area and local leaders are being proactive in meeting with the DNRC to ensure that the character of Spencer Lake, and the mountain rising above it, isn’t inexorably altered. A meeting was planned for Monday evening, (after this story went to press), between DNRC officials and Whitefish residents and user groups to discuss the project.
Greg Poncin, the manager for the DNRC’s Kalispell unit, said he planned to announce at the meeting that the agency will extend the public comment on the thinning project an additional 30 days, to Dec. 21, as a way to get more input, and to demonstrate to the community that the DNRC wants to work collaboratively on the timber project.
“We’ll hopefully be talking more and we’ll have nothing but smooth sailing on this from here on out,” Poncin said.
Those interviewed said they fully appreciate the DNRC’s obligation to manage these state lands in order to help fill Montana’s school trust fund, but believe the recreational value of these areas deserves consideration as well.
“I’m just concerned about access to a local area of recreation,” Jaymie Noble, who hikes on Spencer Mountain several times a week, said.
“For now, I’m hoping that we can all sit down and work together,” Pete Costain of Flathead Fat Tires, a local mountain-biking advocacy group, said. “I think it’s a little early to be that concerned.”
With a trailhead near the junction of Twin Bridges Road and U.S. Highway 93, the trail network on Spencer Mountain is a hugely popular area for hiking, mountain biking and horse riding, due particularly to its relative proximity to Whitefish.
If the concerns of recreationists seem premature regarding DNRC logging projects, they have their reasons. State Rep. Mike Jopek, D-Whitefish, recalled when the DNRC considered selling key parts of the Spencer Mountain area for development in 2003, a move that resulted in a significant political pushback from local residents. He also pointed to a state logging project in the early 2000s in the Beaver Lake area that Jopek said, “pretty much devastated the area for recreation.”
Recent timber projects in the Beaver Lake and Pig Farm areas have been far better, Jopek said, but that’s mainly because recreation was taken into account. He is concerned that the Spencer Lake proposal, at this point, still lacks that component.
“My contention tends to be that the scope of the project the DNRC has put together, it’s simply too narrow,” Jopek said, suggesting that the DNRC partner with Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to incorporate recreational use into the plan for the timber sale. “That multi-agency cooperation, I think, would lead to a much better project.”
Poncin, however, points to other projects on school trust land around the valley that have accounted for recreational uses, like the project along Skyles Lake that incorporates a corridor with an easement for the Trail Runs Through It project, or a timber sale near Echo Lake that allowed a nordic ski club to maintain a groomed ski trail through the area.
The Spencer Lake project will be in accordance with the uses for the area outlined in the Whitefish Neighborhood Plan, and will result in a north-south trail corridor through the area, as well as a parking lot at the north end that is safer and more convenient than the current pull-offs along Twin Bridges Road used by people now, Poncin said. Other public concerns about the types of trees harvested, or where the logging takes place, he added, will be addressed as the project progresses.
But the early anxiety over the Spencer Lake project underscores an issue taking place all over the state when a parcel of school trust land, which is managed by the DNRC to raise revenue for educational institutions, is also valued by residents for recreation – a use that produces little revenue beyond permit fees.
Both Jopek and Poncin encourage partnerships, like what exists for some areas in Whitefish and Bigfork, where a local governments or group pays the DNRC a lump sum in exchange for recognizing the recreational characteristics of the area.
“It’s kind of taking the conservation license concept to the next phase,” Jopek said.
Poncin likes the idea as well, saying: “We see opportunities for that growing in the future.”