The Bureau of Land Management touts its logging in the Little Snowy Mountains as a first-of-its-kind stewardship project, but some neighbors are dissatisfied with the results of the nearly completed work near the South Fork of Flatwillow Creek.

“I think statewide people are looking at this and saying great,” said Scott Haight, assistant manager for the BLM’s Lewistown Field Office.

The project has been hailed by BLM because money raised from the sale of the timber financed restoration of historic meadows, removed smaller trees to open up the forest floor and cut ponderosa pine infested by pine beetles. Overall, said BLM forester Rich Byron, the stand will now be more resistant to wildland fire.

In its prescriptions for the logging, the BLM listed forest health as the primary objective, with wildlife habitat as a secondary purpose. Once the work is finished in the southeastern corner of Fergus County, the smaller roads will be reseeded and the area will be closed to motorized travel. The public can only access the area by foot.

Neighborhood dispute

At least two neighbors don’t see the work as an improvement.

David Murnion, who lives near the 573 acres that were logged, said the agency has “literally ruined” the tracts. He contended that contractors working for BLM cut trees that were marked to be saved, removed trees that owls used for nesting and cut dense stands of smaller trees deer utilize for safety and warmth.

“It’s pretty amazing what they’re doing,” Murnion said. “It all amounts to staged deforestation.”

Murnion has protested the project from the start, appealing to Sen. Max Baucus and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, to no avail. The Central Montana Wildlands group also appealed the first phase of the project to the Interior Board of Land Appeals. But the BLM’s work was upheld.

Bill Demeyer, of Billings, whose brother, Chuck, owns a cabin near the federal lands, said the logging has scared off wildlife.

“I do feel in certain areas they have really ruined the habitat,” Demeyer said in an e-mail. “I like watching birds and the owls (seven species live in the area before they logged) have left certain areas because they logged everything off and did not leave any old growth or cover for the birds or animals.”

Demeyer said phase two of the work was an improvement, leaving some patches of denser timber for wildlife and leaving trees more closely spaced.

Byron said the BLM intentionally left about 10 percent of the acreage in quarter-acre to one-acre tracts of “islands” for wildlife security. Areas around gullies were also left unlogged. Still, the result is a much more open forest devoid of its once-dense ponderosa pine and Douglas fir undergrowth.

Byron said the hope is that with the forest canopy more open, browse species such as snowberry will regenerate.

“Before, this was a sea of thick pine needle duff,” he said.

Although Murnion and Demeyer are critical of the logging debris left on the forest floor, Byron said that when the wood degrades, it will provide nutrients to regenerate the soil.

“Right now, this is by far the worst it will look,” Byron said. “It’s messy to start with, but it will look better in a few years.”

Loggers’ lifeline

The land was logged in two phases. The first phase treated 243 acres of BLM land and was finished in 2006. The second project, awarded in June to Tim Matheny’s logging company, removed timber from another 330 acres and should be done by early December. The logged areas are only a portion of the more than 11,000 adjoining BLM acres on what’s called the Middle Bench.

Mike Marjamaa, who operates the machine that cuts and stacks the logs for Matheny’s crew, sees the project as a job saver. He moved to the Lewistown area six years ago after the logging business dried up in his hometown of Anaconda. His family’s life has long been tied to logging. His great-grandfather and father were loggers.

“My very first job was packing out post poles for my uncle” at 12, he said. “So I’ve been around the timber industry my whole life.”

With the housing industry in the tank, demand for lumber low and sawmills shutting down, Marjamaa said, this year has been one of his company’s slowest.

“A few guys didn’t make it,” he said, referring to competitors. “Last year the fuel prices doubled, and we weren’t getting any more out of the mill.”

Timber from the South Fork is traveling to mills in Roundup, Seeley Lake and Frenchtown. Some of the small-diameter wood will be processed into pulp. But no buyer could be found for the large piles of biomass left in slash piles that will be burned after they dry out.

Byron said BLM projects such as the one on the South Fork help keep local mills and loggers in business.

“Sooner or later when these guys shut down, we won’t have anybody to do this kind of work for us,” he said.

In fact, the BLM had to rework phase two of its project after one of the two bidders went out of business.

Pressure alleged

At least two other BLM neighbors, both wealthy and with famous names, have worked with the BLM to ensure the logging is done. The N Bar Ranch, owned by software mogul Thomas Siebel, has provided access across its property for phase two of the work. The Curlew Land and Cattle Co., owned by Theodore Roosevelt IV, logged its property and approached the BLM about doing the same on its adjoining acreage, which the ranch leases for grazing. That land was logged in phase one.

BLM officials deny Murnion’s accusations that the agency is doing the ranchers’ bidding and that the logging is simply a way to produce more grass for the ranchers to graze their cattle on.

“BLM has always pursued its own prescription,” said Craig Flentie, information officer for the Lewistown office. “I don’t know if it made any difference who the neighbors are.”

“Whenever we’re afforded the opportunity to come in we’re going to take advantage of it,” Byron said, regardless of the adjacent landowner’s connections.

The agency is already looking at other projects in the Little Snowy Mountains on about 1,800 acres of land inaccessible to the public, as well as partnering with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for work in the Judith and Moccasin mountains.

“The bottom line is we can do a lot more of these projects as long as they pay a good chunk on their own,” said Haight, BLM’s Lewistown assistant field manager.

Contact Brett French at french@billingsgazette.com or at 657-1387.