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← Mission 02 · Flat Tail
MTJP CORPS · MORE THAN JUST PARKS ·02
Mission 02 · Kootenai National Forest, ID

Flat Tail

Kootenai National Forest

Timing

The agency stopped taking comments on September 4. What you find still counts: it backs the formal objections from people who did comment, it goes to the lawyers on the fight, and it is the story.

The sentence we think is wrong

“Road 14620B is currently impassable however after reconstruction, the road would allow administrative use only”

The agency wrote that in its own document, under Haul Road Reconstruction and Maintenance. Nobody has been out to check it. A dated photograph either backs it up or ends it.

How you settle it

Walk in past the gate on Road 14620 to the spur Road 14620B and follow it. Photograph the roadbed itself: is it grown in and blocked, or is it a driveable track? Photos along the spur showing either a washed out, brushed in bed or a clear firm track a pickup could drive.

The decision

The Kootenai National Forest's Cabinet Ranger District is proposing vegetation and fuels management activities near the communities of Whitepine and Beaver Creek in Sanders County, Montana. The project, called Flat Tail, involves forest products, fuels management, and other vegetation management. The agency is accepting public comments on the Environmental Assessment during a 14-day comment period

Read the whole thing, and write to the agency about it

How to record it so it counts

  1. 01Find where the road is supposed to start. Photograph it from the junction, with anything that identifies the spot (a sign, a gate, a milepost).
  2. 02Walk it. Photograph the surface every few hundred meters and at anything that would stop a vehicle: a washout, a slide, a fallen tree, a stream with no crossing, trees growing in the road.
  3. 03Photograph the far end the same way.
  4. 04Let your phone record a GPS track if it can (any tracking app). A screenshot of the track is fine.
  5. 05Write down whether a pickup could drive it today, and why or why not.
What would count
  • Start, middle and end, with the track. A single photo of brush isn’t a road that doesn’t exist.
  • The reason a vehicle could not pass, in a photo.
  • The date. Roads change with a season.
All of it, with the phone settings, in the field guide
Are you going?

Say yes or no. It tells the next person whether anyone has this ground covered, and it is the only way we know a request was answered rather than just read. You can change your mind any time, and nobody follows up.

Join, then say you’re going

Nobody has answered yet

Before you go
  1. Public land only. Plenty of land inside a national forest or park boundary is privately owned, and that is not yours to walk on. A gate or a closure sign means stop. Check the rules for the specific place you are going, because they differ.
  2. Don’t touch survey stakes, flagging, equipment or anything a crew left. Photograph it; leave it.
  3. Don’t approach crews, contractors or agency staff about the project. Don’t interfere with any operation.
  4. Wildlife at a distance. No drones in wilderness or anywhere they’re prohibited. Stay off closed roads and trails.
  5. If you’re not sure, don’t. Weather, terrain, water, fire and people are your call, and yours alone.

More Than Just Parks doesn’t direct where you go or what you do. Terms.