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Logging plan would cut fire danger 9/28/03 Sandpoint, Idaho_ The Sandpoint Ranger District wants comments on a management proposal to reduce forest fuels on about 6,000 acres between East Hope and the Idaho-Montana border. The Rising Cougar Project aims to reduce forest fuels next to private lands, improve wildlife habitat and re-establish the diversity of forest tree species and structures that existed when wildfires burned naturally. "It's important that the people that live in this area are informed and have a say in what we are proposing," District Ranger Dick Kramer said. "I'd much rather be able to talk with them over time on how to address these forest issues, rather than have to meet with them under emergency fire circumstances." Portions of the project are within two designated inventoried roadless areas. The U.S. Forest Service proposes to use helicopter logging to remove dead and dying trees and younger trees that are competing with older, larger, healthier trees. In the south portion of the project, which isn't an inventoried roadless area, a mix of helicopter and road-based logging systems will be used. The project is funded by the National Fire Plan, a federal strategy that identified the communities of Hope, East Hope and Clark Fork as areas near public lands at risk from wildfire. It is similar, but larger, than the former Kirbys Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project, that stretched between Kirby Mountain and East Hope. |