07/14/2026
There’s a strange ritual in the Northern Rockies. Every time the U.S. Forest Service tries to clean up a mess that everyone can see with their own eyes — downed timber, beetle kill, drought‑stressed stands, fuel loads stacked like cordwood — the same environmental watchdog groups sprint to the microphones to declare that the sky is falling.
This week’s example is almost a parody of the pattern.
Two major wind events — December 2025 and April 2026 — blew over trees across Montana and Idaho like matchsticks. Anyone who lives here saw it. Anyone who hunts, hikes, or drives a forest road saw it. And anyone who has lived through a Western fire season knows exactly what comes next: beetles, disease, and then catastrophic fire.
The Forest Service responded with an emergency salvage plan covering roughly five million acres across the region. Not five million acres of clear‑cuts — five million acres of potential treatment, much of it non‑commercial, much of it simply clearing downed fuel before it becomes the next Sundance or Trapper Peak.
And right on cue, the watchdog groups declared it “environmental plundering.”
Let’s be honest: this isn’t about science. It’s about reflex.
These groups oppose forest management on Monday, oppose salvage logging on Tuesday, oppose thinning on Wednesday, oppose prescribed burns on Thursday, and then on Friday hold a press conference demanding to know why the forests are burning so catastrophically.
At some point, the rest of us are allowed to ask: When will the watchdogs get their own act together?
Emergency means emergency
The Forest Service gave a one‑week comment period. The watchdogs call that “rushed.” But the beetles don’t wait for a 90‑day comment cycle. The value of downed timber doesn’t wait. And the next lightning storm certainly won’t wait.
When millions of trees are lying on the ground drying out in June, you don’t have the luxury of a graduate seminar on process. You have a narrow window to act before the problem becomes unmanageable.
We’ve seen what happens when we miss that window. Ask anyone in Boundary County who lived through the smoke of 2015. Ask the folks in Lincoln County who watched the mountains torch off like a blowtorch. Ask the firefighters who had to stand in front of it.
The watchdog groups call this “manufacturing an emergency.” No — the emergency was manufactured by the windstorms, the drought, and decades of litigation‑driven paralysis.
The watchdogs keep barking, but they're not protecting anything
The same groups that oppose salvage logging also oppose thinning in green stands. They oppose mechanical treatment. They oppose prescribed fire. They oppose road maintenance. They oppose new temporary roads even when the alternative is letting entire drainages burn.
And then they accuse the Forest Service of “not doing enough” to protect wildlife and habitat.
Here’s the truth that every forester, firefighter, and rural resident already knows:
Unmanaged forests don’t stay pristine. They decay, they dry, they get sick, and then they burn hotter than anything nature ever produced before the era of fire suppression.
The watchdogs aren’t protecting the forest. They’re protecting their litigation pipeline.
Five million acres of what, exactly?
The Forest Service’s table shows the scale of the problem:
• Nez Perce–Clearwater: 1 million acres suitable for treatment
• Lolo: 1.2 million
• Idaho Panhandle: nearly 1 million
• Kootenai: 793,700
• Flathead: 1.2 million
These aren’t random numbers. They reflect the footprint of the wind damage and the vulnerability of the stands.
And remember: wilderness is off‑limits. Roadless areas are heavily restricted. “Not suitable for timber production” areas will be treated only under strict guidelines. The idea that the Forest Service is about to bulldoze five million acres of untouched old growth is a fantasy cooked up for fundraising emails.
The real question
The watchdog groups keep asking, “Why is the Forest Service moving so fast?”
The better question is: Why have the watchdogs spent 30 years slowing everything down?
Why did we let fuel loads build to crisis levels?
Why did we let beetle kill spread unchecked?
Why did we let litigation replace stewardship?
Why did we wait until after the windstorms, after the drought, after the fires?
The Forest Service is finally trying to get ahead of a problem that has been growing for decades. And instead of helping, the watchdogs are once again trying to throw sand in the gears.
A simple truth the watchdogs don't want to admit
You can manage a forest, or you can watch it burn.
You can salvage downed timber, or you can let beetles turn it into kindling.
You can thin overcrowded stands, or you can send firefighters into a death trap.
You can build temporary roads, or you can watch entire counties choke on smoke for a month.
The watchdogs have had their way for a long time. The results are written in ash across the Northern Rockies.
It’s time they stop barking at every attempt to fix the problem and start taking responsibility for the role they’ve played in creating it.
DARRELL KERBY
Bonners Ferry
https://bonnersferryherald.com/news/2026/jul/02/when-will-so-called-environmental-watchdogs-get-the-forest-management-act-together/
