Restoration Emergency—The Derby Fire, Sweet Grass and Stillwater Counties

Derby Fire Restoration

The largest wildfire in the nation last year began on Aug. 22 with a lightning strike that sparked a small fire near Fishtail, Montana.

For days afterward the fire doubled in size, eventually consuming nearby Derby Mountain and portions of Sweet Grass and Stillwater counties. The blaze destroyed more than 25 homes and scores of buildings. The fire burned through more than 200,000 acres—an area about the size of San Diego—including 83,000 timbered acres and 85,000 acres of rangeland.

The total cost to restore damages is more than $10 million for fencing, native grass seeding, weed control, tree planting, and engineering.

The list of damages is daunting. Thousand of acres of private land were burned and will suffer erosion and noxious weed infestations. Where rangeland and forests and foothills burned, private-land improvements and fencing, recreational trails, roads, road-drainage features, culverts, bridges, and more were destroyed.

Also lost were critical elk winter range and habitat that supports the highest density of mule deer in Montana. The fire consumed wildlife forage, fisheries habitat, and habitat and cover for animals like grizzly bears, wolves, lynx, greater sage grouse, black-backed woodpeckers, mule deer, and black bears.

Damage to Deer Creek recently prompted Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks officials to rescue Yellowstone cutthroat trout from the burned and erosion-prone drainage for safer haven in streams on private land near Red Lodge. Even the trout in locally popular Trout Creek and Bad Canyon Creek, which recently benefited from a $300,000 restoration project, could face life in degraded habitats over the next several years.

Today, all efforts are focused on reestablishing the economic capability of the land, protecting and reducing impacts to water quality, and on rebuilding and restoring infrastructure, livestock range, wetlands, streams, and wildlife habitats.

The good news is that Sweet Grass and Stillwater counties are not strangers to Montana's restoration economy.

Since 2000, the Montana Departments of Environmental Quality, Agriculture, Natural Resources and Conservation, Fish, Wildlife & Parks, and Commerce and the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service distributed funds that helped to create about $5 million for Sweet Grass and Stillwater counties county restoration and revitalization programs. In addition, DNRC delivered $6 million in restoration loans. In all, programs run the gamut from coalmine cleanup to weed control.

This important pre-fire combination of restoration funding provides jobs and economic benefits for local communities. But now there is more work to be done and more funding needed to accomplish the restoration of the fire-damaged area.

So far county weed districts applied for $25,000 in additional Noxious Weed Trust Fund grants for seed to re-vegetate and kill and control noxious weeds in and around the burnt areas.

DNRC is working closely with an array of federal and state agencies and private groups to secure a $1.5 million federal Economic Injury Disaster Loan while County Environmental Health Departments continue to examine water and sewer systems, and debris clean-up operations.

Meanwhile, the Natural Resources Conservation Service through the EQUIP program, and emergency funds from the Farm Services Administration, have committed about $2.5 million for erosion-control needs in the burned area.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer recently said the State of Montana will find money to help those recover from damages that do not fit conventional programs. He insisted, "Weeds, seeds and fences would take top priority."

And Gov. Schweitzer is already seeking a special federal authorization and Montana Legislative action to boost Montana's ability to not only respond to a natural disaster, but to restore the environment afterwards. He also committed up to $200,000 from the Environmental Contingency Fund for seeding, weed, and erosion control on private range and forestlands that are not covered by other financial assistance programs.

But don't get lost in the grants and loans alphabet soup. The need in Sweet Grass and Stillwater counties is similar to the needs of their neighbors: integrated restoration planning to determine the timing, extent, and location of restorative developments in a manner that will benefit the state, the county, the community and the environment.

Once the smoke cleared, the Derby Fire cleanup revealed that Montana must advance integrated restoration in a manner that will improve our environment and our lives, while creating good paying jobs and for Montanans.