GNA Spotlight - Montana, March 2022

Good Neighbor Authority Spotlight

Authored by Gary Ellingson, Montana DNRC GNA Forester

The Brooklyn Bridge GNA timber sale is being implemented in a restoration effort to reduce the probability of high-severity wildfire in the Tenmile Municipal Watershed, which supplies Montana’s capital city of Helena with drinking water.

The Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest (HLCNF) completed an environmental analysis on the Ten Mile South Project area which includes 17,955 acres of vegetation treatments including timber harvest, mechanical re-arrangement of fuels, and prescribed fire. The HLCNF and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (MT DNRC) collaboratively planned and are implementing the 516-acre GNA Brooklyn Bridge timber harvest as one of multiple vegetation treatments. HLCNF completed timber harvest layout, permitting, and road engineering work. MT DNRC prepared a timber sale harvest contract and sold the timber sale through a competitive bid process. The sale sold in March of 2020, and purchaser operations began in June. MT DNRC is administering harvest operations on the multi-year timber sale, with an anticipated completion date of October 2024. MT DNRC will also burn landing piles and conduct post-harvest regeneration surveys. Revenues generated from the sale will be used to complete additional restoration services based on a jointly prepared prioritization list prepared by HLCNF and MT DNRC.

Brooklyn Bridge timber harvest units include areas of extensive beetle-killed lodgepole pine with heavy accumulations of standing and down timber. The completed project will create a mosaic of vegetation and fuel structures more resistant to disturbance from wildfire and a safer location for firefighters to initiate future fire management.  

For more information about this project, contact Neil Simpson, MT DNRC, Good Neighbor Authority Program Manager.  

Photo Credit: Gary Ellingson