- Roadless protection is a key goal of the Heritage Act accomplished by adding a new layer of roadless protection to the Conservation Management Area and explicit requirements for consistency with existing laws and regulations.

- Heritage Act allows traditional uses like local firewood gathering and post and pole harvesting to continue in locally popular areas. 

- Heritage Act gives Forest Service flexibility to pursue vegetation management and fuels reduction work as they have done in the past.

Why the Heritage Act?

The Heritage Act is a long-term insurance policy for the Front.  It maintains current safeguards, ensures continued traditional uses in key areas, and takes a landscape approach by placing every acre of federal land from Birch Creek to Rogers Pass under a permanent and much higher level protection, either as a Wilderness addition or within the new Conservation Management Area (CMA).

How would Inventoried Roadless Areas be affected by the Heritage Act?

The Heritage Act is clear that current laws and regulations must be upheld, which would include the roadless rule. As an added layer of protection, The Heritage Act specifically lists roadless as one of the values to be protected in making decisions about management of the CMA. While temporary roads would be allowed within the area ¼ mile or less from the Teton, S. Fork Teton, Sun River, and Benchmark roads, most of this area falls within the 5% or so of the national forest lands on the Front that is not inventoried roadless.  These roads would still have to be obliterated after completion of a project, returning the land to its natural state.

Does the Heritage Act impact traditional activities like firewood gathering?

No. Firewood gathering and post and pole collection would continue largely unchanged under the Heritage Act.   The areas where these activities occur are not in any of the Wilderness additions and changes were made to the original version of the Heritage Act to allow for temporary roads to be built within ¼ mile of the Teton, S. Fork Teton, Sun River, and Benchmark roads. This covers the primary areas for these activities.

Does the Heritage Act impact Forest Service fuel reduction projects?  

No, the Heritage Act allows vegetation management such as thinning and fuel reduction work in the Conservation Management Area to move forward in the same manner the Forest Service manages the area today. All of the cabins, campgrounds, and other facilities that would require fuel reduction work fall within the 9,500 acres where temporary road construction is allowed.  For example, the proposed Benchmark fuels reduction project would have been allowed under the Heritage Act since it did not propose any new permanent roads or temporary roads greater than ¼ mile distant from the Benchmark road.

Does The Heritage Act impact management of insect outbreaks like mountain pine beetle?

No. There is little the Forest Service (or others) can do to stop the spread of insect outbreaks, especially mountain pine beetle. The agency’s primary and most cost effective strategy is to address the related wildfire threat by thinning dead trees near structures, facilities, and main travel corridors, which the Heritage Act allows.  

Why doesn’t the Heritage Act have provisions to encourage commercial timber and/or catalyze restoration activities, similar to Senator Tester’s “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act”?

It’s a different type of place. The Rocky Mountain Front landscape is drier and overall does not produce large, commercially valuable trees compared to the three areas in Senator Tester’s bill. Also, unlike the areas in Senator Tester’s bill, the rugged terrain of the Front has discouraged road building and the associated high road densities, clogged culverts, or erosion issues that require forest restoration.