Below is a Facebook post from the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
The Butte Ranger District of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest recently completed their fall/winter prescribed fire pile burning efforts in the Basin Creek Watershed project area south of Butte.
Crews tackled the task of burning 19,000 piles of woody debris from associated forest treatments in the project area. Though utilization of wood products is a priority on this project and firewood can be gathered from hand piles near roads, many areas of the project are too remote, steep, and rocky to allow equipment or people to extract the wood products.
The Basin Creek-Butte Watershed Project area falls within a Montana Forest Action Plan priority area identified for elevated risk of wildfire and forest insects/disease. Under a Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) agreement executed in 2022 between the Forest Service and the Montana DNRC, the parties agreed to work in collaboration to accomplish project goals of reducing fuels, increasing wildfire resilience, and reducing the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire effects on the watershed landscape.
Collaborative implementation of a project of this magnitude can span multiple years. Crews initiated cut/pile treatments in phase one starting in the fall of 2023 and wrapped up pile burning in the winter of 2024. The Forest Service and the DNRC will continue with additional treatments (cutting, piling, and burning) slated for 2025 and into the winter of 2026.
The state of Montana House Bill 883 and grant dollars from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation provided additional financial support for the project.
(Photo credit: Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest)