Forest Service money going to Kalispel Tribe, Coeur d’Alene Tribe projects

From staff reports

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the Kalispel Tribe of Indians are set to receive some cash from the U.S. Forest Service.

The Forest Service is giving out $16.2 million in grants for forest restoration on tribal, state and private lands as part of its Landscape Scale Restoration program.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe is receiving about $300,000 for its work to restore the Latah Creek watershed in Idaho. The Kalispel Tribe of Indians is getting about $122,000 for a project to reduce forest fire fuels and repurpose the material.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe has been working for years to restore Latah Creek, a tributary of the Spokane River, by planting vegetation aimed at reducing erosion and runoff.

The Kalispel Tribe’s project, called Forest Fuels Management through Biochar Air Curtain Burners, would turn forest fuels into biochar, a type of charcoal used for soil amendment and carbon sequestration. It’s a pilot project the tribe is working on with the Lands Council and other organizations.

It’s the first time the Forest Service has made the grants from this program directly available to federally recognized tribes.

The Forest Service program is giving money to 64 proposed projects for this fiscal year.

Of those, 11 are projects that were requested by federally recognized tribes and Alaska Native corporations.

Pasayten Wilderness fire closure lifted

A closure of a portion of the Pasayten Wilderness due to the Crater Creek fire has been lifted.

Nicole Jordan, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in an email Friday that fire officials flew over the Crater Creek fire this week and didn’t see smoke, which convinced the Forest Service to rescind its closure of the Pasayten Wilderness.

The fire hasn’t been declared out, Jordan said, so some risk of wildfire spread remains. But Forest Service officials feel confident it’s safe to reopen the area to the public.

WDFW warned hunters in late August that it was possible the closure of the northeastern corner of the wilderness area would bleed into the state’s high buck hunt, which begins Friday. A popular area for the hunt is the Horseshoe Basin, in the wilderness area’s northeastern corner.