Wild areas are the ecological backbone and social fabric of Big Sky country. Montana’s intact watersheds purify drinking water, sustain blue-ribbon streams, and are critical for grizzly bears and bull trout. Older forests cleanse airsheds and keep us cool in summer.
A new study that I led finds that wild areas in the Northern Rockies Ecoregion — a vast area of 20 million acres in portions of Washington, Idaho, and Montana — are under siege.
Just 2% of the ecoregion is protected from logging and road building. One-third of the forests are mature and old growth; but, likewise, only 2% are protected. A quarter of old forests are within roadless areas about to lose protections from the Trump administration’s nationwide repeal of roadless protections. The repeal will add more roads to a national forest system already overburdened by 370,000 miles of road, enough to drive around the globe 16 times.
If we continue to burn fossil fuels at alarming rates, by mid-to-late century, the region will be much hotter, drier, and lose glaciers. Extreme fire-weather would increase, along with the need to expand home protection measures to create fire-resistant communities.
At the request of local conservation groups, I toured a portion of the Forest Service’s Bitterroot Front Project where the agency is proposing 28 miles of road construction and 43 square miles of commercial logging, including within roadless areas and old-growth forests. I observed a shocking level of forest degradation. Weed infested soils were badly damaged by logging equipment, and there was high tree-mortality from a wildfire despite claims about how such thinning lowers fire severity. The area was peppered with charred stumps that combined with fire related tree mortality to retard forest recovery. The few remaining trees acted as wind sails that will easily topple in high winds.
Expanding projects like these will amplify extreme-fire effects as forests become hotter, drier and windier while also being stripped of large-fire-resistant trees. There is a better way to prepare forests and communities to avoid the worst of climate impacts.
We must directly address the root-causes of forest degradation and uncontrollable wildfires. That means cutting carbon pollution across all sectors, including from logging, which globally is responsible for more emissions than the entire aviation sector. Protecting older forests is prudent conservation as they typically burn in lower severities compared to logged areas. Older forests also draw down and store vast amounts of atmospheric carbon while maintaining cooler and wetter conditions.
My research also shows that the older, upper elevation forests within the Yaak River watershed of northwestern Montana have climate refuge properties compared to the hotter, drier logged surroundings. Similar conditions are anchored by older forests throughout the Northern Rockies.
The Forest Service cannot fire-proof forests or protect communities through logging. The proven way to resist wildfire is to clear flammable vegetation nearest structures and harden homes. Unfortunately, up to 75% of Forest Service treatments are two-thirds of a mile from the nearest structure. Congressman Jared Huffman of California has proposed national legislation aimed at home protection rather than logging of wild areas.
The Forest Service’s timber projects are about to ramp up under the Trump administration’s logging mandates and wholesale gutting of environmental laws. Congress also has required a dramatic increase in commercial logging under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. And under the guise of reducing wildfires, the Senate is poised to pass the mis-named, “Fix Our Forests” Act that will greatly increase logging and exacerbate wildfires.
The Northern Rockies Ecoregion is far too important to squander by giving into misinformation that poses logging as the solution rather than a primary cause of fast-moving fires. Preserving and expanding wild places is the best natural climate solution while decision makers also pursue real measures to thwart the climate crisis.
Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph. D., Senior Conservation Scientist, Conservation Biology Institute, Associates Program, is an award winning-scientist with over 300 peer-reviewed research papers and 10 co-authored books. He has devoted his life to leaving a living planet for his two children, four grandkids, and all those to come.