Meeting set on Lightning Creek project

CLARK FORK — The Idaho Panhandle National Forest is hosting a community meeting Thursday to acquaint the public with a plan to restore whitebark pine and its habitat in the Lightning Creek watershed.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at Clark Fork Junior/Senior High School.

The U.S. Forest Service plans to achieve its restoration goals in the Treasured Landscapes project through prescribed burns and thinning on 3,534 acres of forest north of town.

Prescribed burning would be conducted in 10 project units encompassing 2,885 acres. Thinning and slashing of smaller trees to reduce competition for water and sunlight would occur on 577 acres, according to a project scoping notice.

Additional prescribed burning and pruning would take place on another 102 acres to aid whitebark pine restoration.

The prescribed burning would be done mainly with helicopters, although there would also be some hand ignition in certain locations.

Large fires were once common in the watershed and they burned thousands of acres. But successful fire suppression efforts from 1932 to 1988 and blister rust disease combined to undermine whitebark pine.

The decline of whitebark pine has warranted its candidacy for listing as a threatened species with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Late summer and early fall would be the preferred burn seasons, burning operations could also be conducted in the spring if weather conditions allow.

“Burning would be timed to minimize smoke impacts to local communities, and would be addressed in a line officer-approved burn plan,” Sandpoint District Ranger Erick Walker said in the notice.

The deadline to submit comments on project is Thursday.