New forester no stranger to Lincoln County

Leanne Marten is coming home, in a way.

The new Regional Forester for the U.S. Forest Service’s region one cut her teeth on the Kootenai National Forest, and she is now coming back to lead the region and the 12 national forests that comprise it, spread across five states.

Marten’s career with the Forest Service spans more than two decades and started in the Kootenai, where she was posted at the Canoe Gulch Ranger Station in Lincoln County.

Her roots in the forest, however, run much deeper than that. As a child she spent several years in Eureka, where her father was posted, also with the Forest Service. After working in the Kootenai, both at Canoe Gulch and at the Supervisor’s Office in Libby, she worked her way through several postings in Michigan and Pennsylvania before finding herself in the Washington, D.C. headquarters office, where she was most recently Director of Ecosystem Management Coordination.

“Having worked in many places, I am so fortunate to be back here where the landscapes are breathtaking and the people care greatly about their outstanding natural resources,” Marten said in a Forest Service press release.

Marten spent some time this week in Libby, reacquainting herself with the Kootenai and meeting local stakeholders. Wednesday morning she and Forest Supervisor Chris Savage met with the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners and staffers from the offices of Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester, where she explained her philosophy of forest management.

“The public engagement, all of the collaborative groups coming to the table, that’s the only way to move forward,” she said. “In the end, we’re all just public servants.”

Marten said the key to making progress on the forest is to have an open dialogue, especially when disagreements arise, but to keep the conversation civil and respectful.

“To me it’s all about relationships,” she said. “They start locally and they build, but they require investment. It’s important to keep the dialogue open, even when we disagree. There will be struggles and there will be bugs, but the only way we can work through them is together.”

The commissioners were focused on the forest’s relationship to the economic status of Lincoln County.

“How do we move to a time when fire isn’t the main discussion, when we can talk about jobs and healthy schools,” Commissioner Greg Larson asked.

Commissioner Mark Peck compared the current situation to a pendulum. At one point, he said, the pendulum swung fully in the direction of timber harvest, to the point of overcutting. That situation has changed, with the pendulum swinging back to not enough active management.

“The J. Neils sustainable yield plan for forest management was perfect, it was the middle ground,” Peck said. “Rupert Murdoch and Champion International came in here and did about 40 years worth of logging in seven years. Then they sold out, sold the mill to Stimson and the land to Plum Creek. That was the knife in the heart of Libby, Montana.”

Marten said the Forest Service is steadily moving toward a more active forest management position.

“We’re definitely moving in that direction,” she said. “We are doing more stewardship projects, Chris (Savage) is working on a young growth project in the forest, and we’re going to continue to do that work.”

Marten said recent changes to the procedures for forest project objections should help to speed the process and eliminate some of the litigious activity surrounding logging projects. Under new procedures, objectors are required to submit much more specific objections, she said, as opposed to what she labeled as “form letter” objections.

Even with those changes, however, they don’t expect to see timber activity on the Kootenai return to the heyday levels of the past.

“We’re not going to see another large mill in this community,” Savage said. “The demand isn’t there. The demand is there for specialty wood products, so how do we work together to get incentives for small businesses to come here?”

Marten concurred with Savage’s assessment, adding that the political dynamic seems to be changing.

“We are turning the corner, politically,” she said. “Forest issues are not as partisan as many other issues and we’re seeing support from both sides.”

In the end, it seemed as if Marten has laid the foundation for new relationships with the Lincoln County commissioners.

“I was very impressed with her and the amount of time she has spent in the field in various places,” Peck said. “Her connection to Lincoln County and the Kootenai National Forest is very refreshing. It’s impressive that she’s only been on the job for a month and she’s already on the ground, talking to people, listening and learning.”