Volunteers Rally to Restore Lolo Peak After Devastating Fire

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - This past week, a team of volunteers from Montana Forest Consultants, American Forests, Montana DNRC, along with a local landowner, planted thousands of new ponderosa pine seedlings on the slopes of the iconic Lolo Peak.

I spoke with Zachary Bashoor, CEO of Montana Forest Consultants, recently about the planting effort.

“We have about 380,000 ponderosa pine seedlings that were graciously given to us at a very, very cheap rate this year, as there were some planting projects that unfortunately fell through for the year, and we are utilizing those to try to restore it as much of the Lolo Peak slopes and adjacent lands as possible,” began Bashoor.

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Lolo Peak Reforestation Project Plants 25,000 Seedlings in One Day

Bashoor, at the time of this interview, provided details of the planting that actually took place last week.

“It will be incredibly labor intensive,” he said. “We have some ‘human machines’ that are coming out, who actually are on their way here right now, and we will have about 17 or 18 people out there planting trees. We actually expect to have those 25,000 trees planted in a day and a half, maybe somewhere in there, with very high productivity, and doing really, really quality work.”

Bashoor said the seedlings planted on Lolo Peak were part of a larger project that was cancelled at the last minute.

Bashoor said 500,000 Ponderosa Pine seedlings were Saved From the Compost Heap

“Maybe somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 trees were planted on the slopes of Lolo Peak this year,” he said. “In fact, some 500,000 trees were given to us as a result of some planting projects this spring that lost funding, and we were asked if we could use them, or else they were going to go in the compost, and we told them to send everything you have over and we will find homes for them.”

Bashoor said, of course it will take many years for drivers along Highway 93 to see the thousands of new seedlings grow into mature trees.

The New Trees will Eventually Fill the Undeveloped Ski Slopes on Lolo Peak

“It'll be probably quite a few years before you can really even see them from the highway, you know,” he said. “Unfortunately, we had that Lolo Peak fire that burned quite a bit of private land all across those slopes (in 2017). But as time goes on, those new trees will be visible from the highway. And, you know, as years progress, we're hoping that we're going to be able to stick quite a few more trees into that area and eventually cover up the ski slopes too. That would be amazing.”

Over a decade ago, developer Tom Maclay carved out a proposed ski area called the Bitterroot Resort on Lolo Peak that never came to fruition.