As seen on Missoulian

The vice chairwoman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes told a congressional committee Thursday that the nation would not experience the devastating wildfires it does if U.S. forests were managed the way forestland on the Flathead Indian Reservation is.

Testifying in Washington, D.C., before the House Natural Resources Committee, Carole Lankford said the rest of the country could learn much about healthy forests from her tribes.

“Had our national forests been managed similarly, this country wouldn’t be having the massive forest fires that are occurring with great frequency in recent years,” Lankford said.

Lankford appeared at the oversight hearing at the invitation of U.S. Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont.

Daines said CSKT’s forest management “shows how important tribal sovereignty is.”

“The tribes know best how to manage their own land, where their ancestors have lived for centuries,” Daines said. “What impresses me most is how tribes stretch their resources thin and still are better managers of their forests.”

Lankford told the committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., that her tribes and others carry out their forest management and fuel-reduction programs despite receiving approximately one-third of the money per acre that federal agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, get from Congress.

“How effective would you be if your committee or personnel payroll were reduced by two-thirds from their present level?” Lankford asked Hastings.

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“Operating understaffed and underfunded programs means that we cut corners and pay our employees less than other federal agencies pay their employees for the same work,” Lankford testified. “When we cut corners, some important job requirements fall off the table and don’t get done.”

Still, she said, CSKT has reduced fuels on an average of 7,638 acres of forestland per year for each of the past 10 years through thinning, piling, pile burning and understory burn projects.

“We were the first tribe in this country to treat 10,000 acres in one year,” Lankford told the committee. “As a result, when the Chippy Creek fire crossed state and federal lands before it reached the Flathead Reservation in 2007, we were able to get it extinguished more efficiently than other jurisdictions. Firefighters from other jurisdictions, who were helping us as we helped them, commented on how efficient the fuels-reduction program in this part of the reservation was.”

Chippy Creek was Montana’s largest wildfire of the 2007 fire season, burning almost 100,000 acres, or 155 square miles.

“You can therefore imagine how surprised (we were) when the administration came up with a new method of allocating fuels dollars,” Lankford said of the Hazardous Fuels Prioritization and Allocation System, which she added would have reduced CSKT’s fuels budget by 94 percent.

The new formula, Lankford charged, was “biased in how it could be applied and how easily the formula could be gamed.”

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Daines said his Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act contains important reforms that ensure the U.S. Forest Service prioritization of Tribal Forest Protection Act projects.

“That’s just being a good neighbor,” Daines said. “That’s where the federal government can be a better neighbor of Indian Country, and I look forward to continue to move forward with progress and getting that bill passed.”

The congressman also complained about “habitual litigation” that holds up projects like beetle-kill treatments.

“These lawsuits and lack of action by the Forest Service in managing a forest is very frustrating to local mills, or local communities and our tribes,” Daines said.

Lankford turned the microphone over to CSKT Forestry Department manager Jim Durglo briefly.

Durglo told the committee that “If you take a look at our forest plan, it recognizes the fact that fire and people have been a part of that ecosystem from time immemorial.”

Daines called on the Forest Service to look to Montana tribes’ forest management practices for examples of how the federal government can better protect the health of national forests and nearby communities.

Original Article – CSKT official says forests managed better with less on reservation