Flathead Forest Set to Approve Swan Valley Logging Project Under Emergency Authority
The Rumbling Owls Fuels Reduction Project, which spans 6,200 acres south of Condon near Holland Lake, would be approved under an emergency determination due to wildfire risk
By Tristan Scott
Land managers with the Flathead National Forest plan to approve a fuels-reduction project in the Swan Valley near Holland Lake using an emergency determination on the grounds that it lies in a “high-risk fireshed,” according to an Aug. 18 decision notice. Foresters say the project is eligible for an Emergency Action Determination (EAD) because it proposes to reduce wildfire risk while preserving the area’s old-growth forests.
Initially released for public scoping in 2023, the Rumbling Owl Fuels Reduction Project spans 6,200 acres on the Swan Lake Ranger District of the Flathead National Forest southeast of Condon and east of Highway 83.
According to an environmental assessment prepared by Jeff Durkin, the district silviculturist for the Swan and the project leader on Rumbling Owl, the project meets the newly established criteria for EAD authorization, which the agency has increasingly used to expedite approval of logging projects featuring a fuels-reduction component.
“Many values at risk exist within and surrounding the Condon community, including private/Forest infrastructure and a strong outdoor tourism economy,” Durkin wrote. “Vegetation treatments for fuels mitigation would create conditions in which fire may occur without devastating consequences and provide firefighters the ability to have greater success in suppression activities, thereby protecting community values.”
Combined with recent revisions to the National Environmental Policy Act, the EAD exempts the project from the customary layers of permitting compliance, including an administrative objection period and public comment.
In 2022, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced a 10-year strategy to confront the nation’s growing wildfire crisis, which directed the Forest Service to focus fuels and forest health treatments in areas most susceptible to large wildfire disasters. In 2023, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore identified “an emergency situation on National Forest System lands within 250 high risk firesheds across the West.” The Condon fireshed encompasses the entire Rumbling Owl Project Area and is identified as one of 19 high-risk firesheds in Montana.
In April 2025, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued a memo designating the use of more than 112 million acres of national forests (about 58% of the total land managed by the U.S. Forest Service) for logging to increase timber production and reduce wildfire risk, including on the Flathead National Forest.
According to the decision notice signed by Swan Lake District Ranger Sarah Canepa, “the Flathead National Forest has provided multiple public comment opportunities for the Rumbling Owl project.”
Between June and August 2023, district specialists and the district ranger hosted two field trips in the project area with the Southwest Crown Collaborative, Swan Valley Connections and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks staff. The project was released for a 45-day scoping period in October 2023. In addition, a draft environmental assessment was published in November 2024 for a 30-day comment period, which Canepa said meets the public comment requirements.
During the public scoping process that fall, 28 individuals or organizations provided comments on the project, leading to several changes, including the elimination of a temporary road located in an old-growth stand that would have paralleled Holland Lake Road.
“This temporary road has been removed from the proposal,” the environmental assessment states.
The project includes 4,005 acres of commercial logging and 2,151 acres of noncommercial treatments, such as prescribed burning, precommercial thinning and a gravel pit restoration. It seeks to improve the diversity of the forest’s composition, which has become overstocked with small-diameter trees. Insect and disease have also grown more prevalent, according to the environmental assessment.
Approximately 41.6 miles of National Forest System roads used as haul routes would receive road maintenance, while 4 miles of temporary road would be constructed and 5.4 miles would be added to the system’s road inventory. Just under 3 miles of road would be obliterated and restored.
Approximately 2,560 acres of the project had been owned and managed by Plum Creek Timber Company until the Flathead National Forest acquired the parcels.
“These lands had intensive management activities that focused on removing the high value large and very large diameter trees from the overstory,” the environmental assessment states. “This has resulted in a lack of large and very large live trees, snags and downed woody debris, and an overabundance of small sized trees on these lands. Additionally, these acquired lands, combined with existing private land, and NFS lands has created a checkerboard effect of land sections within the analysis area. The proposed action would feather the boundaries between Plum Creek acquired lands and NFS lands to remove the checkerboard effect and the proposed treatments would shift the trajectory of these stands to be trending towards the desired conditions of the forest plan.”