Earlier this week, Gov. Greg Gianforte announced one of the first timber sales to go through a state-federal partnership this year. The amount of timber cut through the Good Neighbor Authority this year is expected to nearly double compared to 2020.
Kneller Logging Inc. of Libby won the bid on the SkiDale Timber Sale, which is expected to produce about 770,000 board feet of timber from the Kootenai National Forest. The project will be the first to go through the Good Neighbor Authority program in Lincoln County. Work will begin later this month.
Since 2018, Good Neighbor has allowed the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to carry out timber sales on federal land in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service.
DNRC had set a goal of cutting roughly 32 million board feet through the program in 2020, but last year’s Good Neighbor timber sales produced 19 million board feet. A DNRC spokesperson said the harvest fell short of agency goals, in part because two timber sales were pushed to 2021.
DNRC projects that about 31 million board feet will be harvested through the Good Neighbor Authority this year.
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