Governor Greg Gianforte and U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz this week announced that the state is entering into a first of its kind “Shared Stewardship Agreement” to co-manage at least 200,000 acres in northwest Montana.
In a press conference June 30, Gianforte said that will include restoration work and wildfire-prevention projects, along with more aggressive timber harvests. That’s in line with expanded logging mandates from the Trump Administration.
“This is a 20-year agreement with the Forest Service to partner to identify and to implement forest management on a landscape scale,” Gianforte said.
The state’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation has already been part of managing some federal Forest Service lands through the “Good Neighbor Authority”. DNRC has taken over management of 130,000 federal acres since 2021.
The stewardship agreement says that the state and Forest Service will decide on the specific location of these projects in the coming months.
The first project under this agreement is planned to begin by the end of the year.
