Bitterroot, Flathead and Lolo National Forests
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Public Involvement
Content Analysis Reports
2007 Content Analysis Report now available.
Content Analysis main page.
Public Meetings
Several meetings were scheduled to provide information about the proposed land management plans and to gather comments. The following schedule provided the times and locations for each forest. These meetings were also announced in local newspapers.
| Public Open House Meetings | Date | Location | Time |
| Bitterroot | May 8th | Bitterroot River Inn, Hamilton | 4-8 pm |
| May 18th | Bitterroot River Inn, Hamilton | 4-8 pm | |
| May 31st | Bitterroot River Inn, Hamilton | 4-8 pm | |
| Lolo | May 10th | Missoula: University Center, U.of Montana | 6:30-9 pm |
| May 11th | Seeley Lake: Senior Citizens’ Center | 6:30-8 pm | |
| May 16th | Superior: Superior High School | 6:30-9 pm | |
| May 23rd | Plains: Fairgrounds Pavilion | 6:30-9 pm | |
| Flathead | May 22nd | Kalispell: West Coast Kalispell Center | 4–8 pm |
| June 15th | Kalispell: West Coast Kalispell Center | 4–8 pm | |
| Flathead Public Hearing | June 17th | Kalispell: Kalispell High School | 10-4 |
Written Comments
If you would like to comment on the Proposed Land Management Plans, you can visit the Bitterroot, Flathead, or Lolo Proposed Land Management Plan pages. There you will find guidelines to help you write effective comments.
About Public Involvement
The purpose of public involvement is to meaningfully engage all interested individuals, groups, agencies and other local, state, and tribal governments in our land management plan revision process. We have set the following two goals to help us to this:
1. To meaningfully and efficiently incorporate the “public voice” in arriving at revised Plans that are useful, implementable, and widely supported.
2. To build a constructive and lasting two-way dialogue between the three forests and the people they serve.
In January 2004, we released a Proposed Action that presented our preliminary
thoughts as to how we might respond to major issues or needs for change.
It became the focal point for public discussions through open houses,
invited presentations, community-based collaborative groups, and many
written comments. Our Content
Analysis Report summarizes what we learned from people that responded
to our Proposed Action. During most of 2004, we used information in our
Content Analysis Report
to develop issues, and from those, we developed a set of preliminary alternatives
to be analyzed in an Environmental Impact Statement.
The 2005 Final NFMA Planning Rule of January 2005, changed our planning process requirements. Emphasis shifted to working collaboratively with the public to refine one Preferred Option rather than develop several management alternatives. Reasoning that forest land management plans do not make decisions that have on-the-ground effects that can be meaningfully evaluated, the new planning rule determined that most forest land management plans should be categorically excluded from more detailed NEPA analysis.
In late spring of 2005, we began public discussion of our Preferred Option, with each forest using some combination of the following methods: (1) posting draft desired conditions and supporting maps on our website, (2) open houses, (3) invited presentations, (4) newsletters, and (5) on-going collaborative dialogue in community-based working groups. The major focal points of the collaborative process were: (1) desired conditions, and (2) suitability of land areas for various purposes. Forest leadership teams worked with the plan revision team to incorporate the resulting input into the Proposed Forest Land Management Plans released for public comment on May 1, 2006.
Notes from 2005 Community Meetings
Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex
Darby
Fall 2005 - Responses to All Agreements from Meetings on the Bitterroot
Bitterroot Summary - September 6
Flathead
Hamilton
Fall 2005 - Responses to All Agreements from Meetings on the Bitterroot
Bitterroot Summary - September 6
August 29 | August 29 Agreements
August 15 | August 15 correction #1 | August 15 correction #2
Missoula
Ninemile
Plains/Thompson Falls
August 8 (new version posted on 8/23)
Seeley Lake
Stevensville
Fall 2005 - Responses to All Agreements from Meetings on the Bitterroot
Bitterroot Summary - September 6
Superior
Notes from 2003/2004 Community Meetings
USDA Forest Service - Bitterroot, Lolo, Flathead National
Forests
Last Modified: Tuesday, 23 January 2007 at 12:03:54 EST