Field Reports
NATIONAL FORESTS
Fire restrictions enacted
‘Tis the season.
Some national forests are following the lowland lead of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in announcing fire restrictions on public lands.
This week, the Okanogan and Wenatchee forests began enforcing a ban on campfires outside of designated campgrounds with fire pits.
Rich Landers
NATIONAL FORESTS
Plans call for wilderness
Revisions to the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest management plan call for few changes in livestock grazing but more road and trail closures to motorized vehicles and nearly 250,000 additional acres of recommended wilderness.
Revisions to the 1,293-page plan have been in the works since January 2002. The recently released plan outlines suggestions for managing motorized and non-motorized recreation, cattle grazing, timber harvest and wilderness. The Beaverhead-Deerlodge forest covers 3.38 million acres in eight southwestern Montana counties.
The draft plan proposes closing 158 miles of existing roads and 234 miles of trails to vehicles, leaving about 90 percent of forest roads and 45 percent of trails for motorized use, forest supervisor Tom Reilly said.
The forest is home to about 6,671 miles of roads and 2,519 miles of trails, he said.
Associated Press
CAMPING
Bear country precautions
August is an important month for bears to layer on the fat they’ll need to survive the winter. In their quest for food, black bears will look where the pickings are easy including campsites and garbage cans.
The following tips will help keep campers and rural landowners from attracting bears into close encounters that can be dangerous to humans and usually result in death to the bears:
•Store garbage in a secure building and disposed of it regularly.
•Food, pet food and livestock feed should be stored inside a secure building or a bear-proof container.
•Bird feeders can attract bears unless you hang them at least 10 feet high and away from any tree or pole a bear can climb.
•Coolers are not a safe storage for food in bear country. When camping where bear-proof storage units are not available, coolers should be placed inside the vehicle and all doors and windows shut. Food may be suspended high in the air, but care must be taken that a bear cannot climb a nearby tree to reach the suspended food.
•Do not bury food scraps or pour cooking grease or anything that might be tasty on the ground or into the fire pit. Also, stow barbecue grills or other smelly cooking gear inside your vehicle.
Idaho Fish and Game
Alaska halibut by air
A Bozeman man competing in the halibut derby in Homer, Alaska, recently caught his 280-pound fish too late in the day and too far from shore to make it back in time for the weigh-in.
So Travis Huntsinger hired a charter plane for $700 to fly the fish back by the 9 p.m. deadline, knowing that the winner of last year’s season-long fishing derby won $50,000.
“If a 275-pound fish would have won it, and we didn’t fly it back, we would have been kicking ourselves,” said Huntsinger, who spent $200 more to fly the fish to the weigh-in than he paid for his round-trip ticket from Montana.
Huntsinger’s fish held the lead for a time until an Oregon angler caught a 310-pounder.
“Even if I end up in third place for the month, the plane ticket will still be a wash,” Huntsinger said. “But at least I got a good fishing story out of it.”
Associated Press
RIVERS
Authors talk history
Three Northwest authors with regional insights into the Corps of Discovery will be featured this month in conjunction with the Discovering the Rivers of Lewis and Clark exhibit in River Park Square.
The authors will speak and answer questions starting at 7 p.m. in the Kress Gallery on the third level of River Park Square, where Inland Northwest river landscape artwork is on display.
Aug. 11, Spokane author and historian Jack Nisbet presents “Visualizing Rivers: How the Plateau tribes introduced David Thompson to the major drainages of the Inland Northwest” adapted from his upcoming book, “The Mapmaker’s Eye.”
Aug. 11, Robert Carriker, Gonzaga University history professor, presents “Sergeant John Ordway’s Mysterious Salmon River,”based on one of his several books that involved the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Aug. 17, Paul Vandevelder presents “What Happens to Cultures when Rivers Die.” Vandevelder, author of the popular “Coyote Warrior,” has been an investigative reporter, photojournalist and documentary film-maker for more than 20 years.
Rich Landers