Field Reports: More help needed to maintain national forest trails
TRAILS – The Forest Service is letting the public suggest trail systems that should receive priority for maintenance in an era of bare-bones trail budgets.
“No new money is coming in, but we’re looking to do more teaming with partners and volunteers,” said Kent Wellner, Northern Region trail program manager in Missoula.
As part of a new national strategy, the Forest Service will select up to 15 priority areas among its nine regions across the country where a backlog in trail maintenance has contributed to reduced access and potential harm to natural resources or trail users.
So far, the most interest in the Northern Region has been for trails in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and the contiguous Central Idaho wilderness areas that include the Selway, Frank Church River of No Return and Gospel Hump wilderness areas, Wellner said.
However, the selected areas across the country will be a mix of motorized and nonmotorized trails, Forest Service officials say.
The regions have until April 15 to submit at least three regional proposals to National Headquarters. Those proposals will be weighed against proposals submitted by other Forest Service regions.
In 2015, volunteers and partners nationwide contributed nearly 1.4 million hours – a value of about $31.6 million – in maintenance and repair of nearly 30,000 miles of trails, the agency said last week in a media release.
Even that effort must be increased to help the cash-strapped agency get trail maintenance backlogs under control, officials say.
Lake Pend Oreille
fisheries improve
FISHING – Lake Pend Oreille’s kokanee and trout fisheries are in good shape and continuing their upward trend, said Andy Dux, Idaho Fish and Game’s regional fisheries manager.
“Estimates of kokanee are looking really good and all age classes continue on the upward trend,: Dux said. “As a result, that’s provided a lot of food for the predators in the lake and the rainbow trout growth rates continue to improve opportunities for trophy-size fish.”
The invasive boom of lake trout in the lake was a major contributing factor to the dramatic crash of kokanee in the late 1990s and the closure of the kokanee fishing season in 2000. Fish management efforts brought the kokanee back and the season was reopened in 2013.
Suppression of lake trout using targeted commercial fishing techniques has been successful and can be scaled back to lower-cost maintenance efforts to keep the lake trout numbers low, Dux said.
Turkey hunting class
Tuesday evening
HUNTING – A free class on the basics of hunting wild turkeys is being offered from 6-9 p.m. Tuesday at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Office, 2315 N. Discovery Pl. in Spokane Valley.
Register by calling (509) 654-8727 or by signing up online at wdfw.wa.gov/hunting/huntered/clinics
Idaho bighorns killed
to prevent disease
WILDLIFE – Two bighorn sheep rams that were in immediate proximity to domestic sheep near Challis were euthanized Thursday to prevent the bighorns from potentially carrying disease back to the wild herd, the Idaho Fish and Game Department reports today. One ram was 5 years old and the other 6.
Bighorn sheep are prized by hunters who must compete against high odds to draw the limited number of tags in annual lotteries. Bighorn numbers in Idaho, Montana and Washington have suffered dramatic setbacks in the past few decades because of their susceptibility to diseases transmitted by domestic sheep.