Ravalli County officials express concern over USFS headquarters relocation

Ravalli County Commissioners voiced concern about the relocation of the United States Forest Service (USFS) headquarters to Utah in a meeting on Wednesday.

Commissioners Dan Huls, Greg Chilcott and Jeff Burrows met with Matt Zacharias, a field representative for U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke on Wednesday.

Commissioner Chilcott said when you look at the high fire risk here, working with someone from Utah or elsewhere instead of working with someone from Montana would be shortsighted.

“We look at it from our perspective, but we're the number one fire risk in the nation,” Chilcott said. “It seems like it would be a pretty good thought process to include or focus on this area with resources and command resources.”

Commissioner Burrows said moving the headquarters is a big deal and once programs and headquarters become regionalized to urban areas the more rural areas end up losing. He said he doesn’t feel the move will be beneficial to Montana.

“I mean, not having that regional office anymore, that's a big deal," Burrows said. "There's a lot of history there, and it was significant."

Burrows said the regionalization would benefit companies like Bridger Aerospace because they would get bigger and would contract out less. He said that is an issue because a lot of people being contracted out are single resource businesses with one fire engine with a crew barely making a living each year. Burrows said it is speculation, but he feels regionalization will not allow for the smaller businesses to continue being contracted out.

“What you're probably going to see is those mom-and-pop businesses start to go under because of more bureaucracy, more costs associated with it," Burrows said. "And you'll start to see these bigger firefighting companies kind of take over."

Zacharias said the goal is to improve national response time but agreed that going too far in one direction towards the regional side and the grassroots voices can result in missed opportunities and create challenges.

Burrows asked if they have done analysis to look at inefficiencies when it comes to smaller localized firefighting units being utilized and said he would be interested in seeing the findings. He said it would make more sense to use local firefighting units because they can deploy quicker and are familiar with the landscape and local resources.

Chilcott said the commissioners know fires are in the near future and Zacharias agreed, adding the dry winter will likely be a factor for the upcoming fire season.

“I sure would like to see some fast tracking and get some of those fuels off the forest," Chilcott said. "Some sort of production creating some sort of economic positive impact, just to maybe draw down resources."

Chilcott said taking out lumber would help reduce firefighting costs. Burrows suggested it might be good to have a log sorting yard and make it subsidized firewood so there would be fewer costs than spending money for a processing mill.

“it's basically a heating subsidy, which we already do for other heating sources — subsidized wood burning for Ravalli County residents,” Burrows said. “If you could just get them down the road into a log sorting yard, where you take some of the valuable timber out of it, but the rest of it, it's just firewood grade our residents could come get it.”

Commissioner Huls said the blowdown areas here pose a risk for beetle infestation and there is a need to get rid of the fallen trees.

“The potential for further damages is significant,” Huls said. “We need to get that stuff coming up as quickly as we can, it’s already down.”