Montana Officials Select Priority Landscapes for Forest Management, Wildfire Reduction

Governor Greg Gianforte stood at the Montana State Capitol on Friday alongside U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz and DNRC Director Amanda Kaster to announce the first two priority landscapes selected under Montana's Shared Stewardship Agreement, targeting roughly 213,910 acres in the Flathead and Kootenai National Forests and 200,000 acres within the Bitterroot National Forest for coordinated forest management.

The selections mark the opening move of a 20-year collaboration that Gianforte and Schultz formalized on June 30, 2025, outside Helena. The agreement is designed to reduce wildfire risk, improve forest health and support Montana's wood products industry through coordinated, cross-boundary planning between the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the Forest Service.

"This is exactly what we envisioned when we signed this landmark Shared Stewardship Agreement," Gianforte said. "Partners working across boundaries to better protect communities, support timber jobs and restore healthy forests."

Officials selected the three western forests based on wildfire risk to nearby communities and infrastructure, opportunities for coordinated planning and readiness for implementation. Schultz framed the selection as a structural shift in how the two agencies work together, not just a collection of individual projects.

"These are landscape scale commitments, which means that these places are where we are aligning planning, funding, staffing and authorities for sustained restoration and timber production," Schultz said. "This is how we move from projects to programs."

The planned treatments include fuels reduction, timber sales and forest restoration. Schultz added that joint planning on those fronts creates "stronger community defenses" against wildfire.

Kaster tempered expectations about how quickly or heavily those forests would be logged. "The actual amount of volume harvested off of the landscapes in any given year or over the course of the total agreement, however, will be dependent on which projects are developed, and the volume will be constrained by a variety of environmental factors, the project level NEPA analysis and the forest plans," she said.

The Shared Stewardship Agreement is described as additive to both agencies' existing management portfolios. DNRC used the Good Neighbor Authority in 2025 to support Forest Service timber sales and restoration work covering more than 40,000 acres, providing a baseline of activity the new agreement is meant to build upon and accelerate.

Landscape maps of the selected project areas and a video recording of Friday's press conference are available through the Montana State newsroom. The DNRC Service Desk can be reached at (406) 444-2000.