Reclaiming Roads and Providing Jobs on the Helena National Forest

Wildlands CPR, The Wilderness Society, and the Helena National Forest hosted a field tour on the Helena National Forest yesterday, August 25th.  The tour highlighted the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative, visiting a site where road reclamation is ongoing to protect and restore clean water supplies. Once in the woods, the tour met up with excavator operator Karry Cross, who ran his excavator to give the camera crews from 3 local t.v. stations a sense of what road reclamation is all about.  In addition to seeing what this work looks like on the ground, attendees also learned about the water quality benefits of the work, and the high-quality jobs that projects like this provide to the local community.  Here's an exceprt from Karry from the ABC news story that resulted:

"It's nice to be home, reclaiming roads is making it look as natural as you can make it look. You got to have a vision of what it might have looked like 100 years ago and what it's going to look like 100 years from now, you got to have an eye for beauty," says Equipment Operator Karry Cross of D.S. Jr. Trucking. 

Staff from the Helena National Forest included Helena District Ranger Duane Harp, Forest Engineer Eric Barclay,  Hydrologist Dave Callery and Hydrology Technician Laura Jungst.

The Legacy Roads and Trails program has been quietly restoring our nation's forests for the past three years, reclaiming old roads, and upgrading culverts and bridges to restore water quality, all while putting people to work in the woods.  With 16.4 million in Legacy Roads and Trails funds provided to the state of Montana over the past three years, the project has likely created or maintained more than 200 direct jobs throughout the state, with even more jobs created as those funds are recirculated through those local communities.

Click on the links below for the different news stories:

ABC - KFBB - Great Falls/Helena - by Kacey Drescher

NBC - Beartooth NBC - by Kristin Price

CBS - KPAX - Statewide - by Marnee Banks

Thanks to all who helped organize this tour.