MISSOULA — The federal funding freeze has been impacting services, programs, and industries across the country. That's the same case in Montana, where the forest products industry and forest managers are trying to understand what the federal funding freeze means for them.
“There’s an impact on landowners who are the direct recipients of these funds and the contractors they hire, as well as the workforce that manages and organizes and implements these projects. And so right now we've seen an estimated 30 contractors that have been impacted by this stop order, and we anticipate that that number will grow as we come out of the breakup season this spring and return to our typical annual burn cycle,” said Erik Warrington, stewardship program manager for the DNRC.
Right now, there is roughly $13 million in federal funds frozen for various projects across the state.
Much of which goes to programs for fuel mitigation on public and private land. Programs that have historically had a major impact.
“Some of the fires that we had the, the Collt fire up near Seeley Lake a few years ago. The treatments that have been done totally changed the fire behavior. It changed the ability of the fire suppression Teams to come in and, and manage that fire. And so if we aren't doing those treatments, then those lands remain at risk and as it's been pointed out, you know, some of those projects are mid-implementation,” said Dave Atkins, former president of the Montana Forest Owners Association.
And besides the impact on fuel mitigation for wildfire season and the impact to contractors, private industry is also affected.
“Everybody operates based on contracts, so they have a contractor in private running order to do this work, and they're not sure they can get the work done, so they're going to be forced to kind of hold back,” said Gordy Sanders, chair of the Montana Forest Products Roundtable.
At the meeting, staff members from Senator Daines, Senator Sheehy, and Representative Downing expressed their support for the industry, although Representative Downing’s staff member emphasized that the Representative is committed to “rooting out waste, fraud and abuse”.
None of the staff members had any information to present to the forest industry representatives on when the funds may be unfrozen.
