Among the targeted areas are Sawmill Gulch in Missoula's Rattlesnake Valley, the Frenchtown foothills and the Superior and St. Regis areas northwest of Missoula.
Forests in those wildland-urban interface areas - where residential development meets the woods - are crowded with fuels that can create unusually intense surface fires that leap into the crowns of trees, officials said.
Today, the Forest Service uses thinning, logging and prescribed burns, and allows some remote fires to burn if they don't threaten people, property or infrastructure.
Western Montana has had a growing number of large wildfires since 2000, prompting public calls for more fuel reduction in forests.
“People are very happy to see us working on these types of fuel-reduction projects, especially when they look out their back doors and see overstocked conditions,” said Sharon Sweeney, the Superior District ranger.
Wildfire is a natural part of the ecosystem, but “not much is natural these days when you have so many homes in the (wildland-urban) interface,” she said.
In 2000, wildfires burned extensively near Frenchtown, heightening public concern about the wildfire potential.
The Frenchtown Face project, which is under way, includes thinning, commercial logging and prescribed burning of about 3,600 acres, and prescribed burning of an additional 6,500 acres within the low-elevation ponderosa pine and Douglas fir forests.
The goal is to use thinning and other tools to return the area's ecosystem to a more natural condition, improve fish and wildlife habitat and reduce the risk of tree death from bark beetles, said Boyd Hartwig, spokesman for the Lolo National Forest. Beetle-killed trees are a major source of fuel for wildfires.
The Frenchtown Face project also includes removing or replacing culverts, reconstructing or decommissioning of roads, spraying noxious weeds and improving campgrounds, picnic areas, parking areas, trailheads and off-highway vehicle, mountain bike and horse trails.
The Sawmill Gulch project, which is under way, includes 754 acres of timber cutting, brush removal and prescribed fires. More than 400 of those acres are within the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area.
After the 2003 wildfires burned thousands of acres of national forestland near Missoula, the Forest Service, Sierra Club, Society of American Foresters and private landowners formed a partnership to reduce fuels on public and private lands around Sawmill Gulch.
The project, which will take several years to complete, will reduce the number of trees by up to 50 percent in the work area.
This summer, thinning will occur on 178 acres of the project area. The Sawmill Gulch trail will remain open, but there may be short-term closures. Recreationists are urged to use caution near the work zone and logging trucks.
Two more fuel-reduction projects are nearly complete near the towns of Superior and St. Regis.
The projects are only about 200 acres each, but they are critical because they target crowded forests on the towns' borders, Sweeney said.
Planning will start this fall on another project to reduce fuels on another 300 acres near St. Regis.
The proposed Butte Lookout project would use timber cutting and underburning to reduce fuels on more than 1,400 acres along Lolo Creek southwest of Missoula.
Fuel-reduction projects also are in various stages of planning in Grant Creek, Seeley Lake, Rock Creek and other areas of the Lolo National Forest.
The DeBaugan fuel-reduction project is planned near private property on both sides of Interstate 90 near DeBorgia, Haugan, Saltese and Cabin City.
Wildfires have not occurred widely since the 1920s in the project area in the St. Regis watershed, which has become crowded with beetle-killed trees.
The project, which is expected to start next spring, includes commercial logging and thinning on more than 4,200 acres and prescribed burning on more than 1,100 acres.
Forest Service officials worked with local residents, elected officials and environmentalists to form a task force that developed the fuel-reduction project.
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