Missoula Current
As the state plans to increase logging on national forests, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation wants more money to prepare and manage timber sales.
On Monday, a legislative appropriations committee heard some of the reasons why the DNRC is requesting about $7 million per year more than it did in the 2017 session. The main reason, said executive director John Tubbs, is to hire more employees, partly to make up for attrition and partly to prepare to start logging national forests under a Farm Bill program.
“DNRC, since I’ve taken over in 2013, has lost 20 (full-time employees). We have not grown this agency. I’ve lost. We had about 520; we’re down to 500,” Tubbs said. “We are going to ask for some FTE’s. But, even if those are approved for the forestry division, we’ll be net-down 14 FTE since I started.”
In particular, Tubbs wants enough money for state forester Sonya Germann to hire 6.5 people to help expedite timber sales and contracting on national forests as authorized under the Good Neighbor Authority program created by the 2014 Farm Bill. Germann also needs extra money for the program’s operating expenses.