County-wide trail system could become reality

In Willy Peck’s ideal world, a continuous trail would run the 77-mile length of Mineral County. It would be a trail that could be used by both all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiler riders as well as hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts.

”With the route, we would have access to every town between Nine Mile and St. Regis except Alberton. I haven’t found a route into Alberton,” Peck said about his vision.

The idea for the continuous trail system started with the Soldier Butler Timber sale, located in the Ninemile area. The 45,160-acre project is 7 miles northwest of Huson and is currently under analysis with the Lolo National Forest. The primary focus of that project is to reduce “high severity wildfires” in the urban-wilderness interface areas.

Peck, who is a resource manager for Tricon Timber in St. Regis, commented that the tourist side of things isn’t really promoted in Mineral County, a county which is 90 percent owned by the U.S. Forest Service and the state of Montana. This got him started on the idea of adding recreation to project proposals which include timber sales and other Forest Service activities.

“Recreation has never been pushed as part of a timber sale,” he said. “But when you go into areas, you should think about more than just the wildlife and the logging. It should be an all-inclusive project, one that includes the communities.”

ATV and snowmobile enthusiasts definitely bring a boost to local communities. Each year in January, the Montana Nightriders Snowmobile Club hosts a poker ride in Haugan. Approximately 400 riders attend and it brings additional revenue to the businesses on the west-end of the county. Nationally, there are 1.2 million registered snowmobiles and riders spend over $34 billion per year on equipment and travel associated with the sport, according to the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association. Montana has over 22,500 registered snowmobilers and Peck would like to see the county get a bigger slice of that pie.

Peck brought his idea to the management at Tricon and the company fully supported the idea. Whenever any projects take place on public land, they need to go through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. NEPA was first implemented in 1970 and was the first major environmental law. All agencies must assess the effects their proposed actions have on the environment before decisions can be made.

NEPA is the difficult hurdle a trail project like the one Peck is proposing has to overcome. He said there’s been a little push back from the Forest Service to include a trail system as part of a project because they often don’t think the funding would be there. But he would as least like to see it as part of the NEPA proposal.

Soldier Butler and Redd Bull are two large projects currently in the works that he would like to see the trail system added to as a recreational component. But Redd Bull won’t see completion until 2020. There were two other projects that would have fit into the trail system but it wasn’t on the agenda at the time the sale was done, Jam Cracker and Cedar Thom.

“It’s not that it can’t be done in those areas, it’s just that they will need to go back in and get additional NEPA approval to tie all the projects together,” he said. “It’s a fairly lengthy process to get done. Unless we want to bite the whole thing off and try to get it done through NEPA. But then it probably won’t get done. It’s more realistic to just take it and get it done one piece at a time.”

However, Soldier Butler is already economically challenged because it is not a viable project. It’s in an environmentally sensitive area and there has already been a couple of major fires over the past 10 years. According the reports the area needs to be thinned. But there isn’t enough timber for a company like Tricon to access to make it profitable. Therefore it’s not self-sustaining and would need additional funding. Currently, the proposal is being revamped to try and make it a more viable project.

There seems to be a lot of community support for the trail system idea, including enthusiasm from the Mineral County Chamber of Commerce and other residents. They recognize the importance of creating projects that could bring additional recreational dollars into the area.

The idea has also gotten support from the Mineral County Resource Coalition and that group has reached out to various groups like the Wild Turkey Federation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Mule Deer Foundation, as well as some of the local snowmobile and ATV club members.

Once completed, the question would be “who maintains the trail system?” Peck said that would probably go through recreational dollars obtained through state and federal funds, as well as possible help from the various clubs.

He said funding may also be available from private companies, like Polaris.

But for now, Peck is happy to see the prospect of some of the government regulation streamlined in the NEPA process. This would allow the implementation of these type of projects to be easier. He’s been working in the timber industry since 1970 and has been with Tricon since 1985.

“As a group, Tricon has decided to get this done. I’ll probably retire in about four years and these younger guys will pick up the ball and try to carry it through,” Peck said, making it so he won’t be working when the trail system is finished, but hopefully he will be able to utilize it during his retirement years.