Montana Wildfire News

Half a year after a memorable fire season shrouded Montana in thick gray skies, burned more than a million acres and caused tens of millions of dollars in budget shortfalls, scientists at the University of Montana are saying Montanans should get used to it.

In the forests of the Rocky Mountains, fewer trees are growing back after recent wildfires because of climate change. That’s what a team of researchers discovered after studying seedling regeneration at 1,500 sites in five different states. University of Montana fire ecology Professor Philip Higuera is a co-author of the study. He joins us now.

Despite a smoke-filled summer, researchers from the University of Montana say that 2017 was actually a good year for the travel industry . While almost 80 percent of businesses in northwestern Montana say they were affected by wildfires and smoke last summer, those same businesses raked in more than a billion dollars from out-of-state visitors.

For more than half a decade, the Lake County Conservation District has been working on a proposal to transfer management of 60,000 acres from the Flathead National Forest to the state for the next 100 years.

Montana is appealing FEMA’s denial of the state's request for a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration following last year’s historic fire season. In late December, the federal government denied Governor Bullock’s initial request for help in covering some of the $44 million in firefighting costs billed to the state at the end of last summer summer when Montana’s own fire fund was almost drained.

The U.S. Forest Service says additional analysis is needed for a forestry project near Lincoln in the aftermath of last summer’s wildfires . When the Park Creek and Arrastra wildfires merged into one big fire last August, it burned more than half of the Stonewall Vegetation Project-area northwest of Lincoln.

The Flathead National Forest is hosting an open house on a proposed timber sale near Bigfork. The open house for the Bug Creek Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project happens February 6 at the Swan Lake Ranger Station in Bigfork. The agency will have specialists on hand to answer questions, it’s taking public comment on the proposal until February 16.

The federal government has denied Montana’s request for $44 million dollars in disaster funding following the historic 2017 fire season that burned over a million acres across the state.

This past wildfire season , unprecedented amounts of wildfire smoke in communities across western Montana threw public health agencies a curveball. Yesterday, we dove into what we know and are still learning about the long term health impacts of exposure to wildfire smoke . Today, we’re looking at what it would take to provide filtered air to the most vulnerable Montanans.

This summer, Missoula County had its worst wildfire smoke season on record. It’s unclear how exactly that impacted the health of county residents, both as the fires were burning and longer term, but researchers are starting to pull in some data.