BY MAX SILVERSON
The Star-News
The Payette National Forest is seeking public comments on a 40,000-acre project that would thin 13,300 acres of forest north of McCall and create a permanent snowmobile ban on Granite Mountain.
The Granite Goose Landscape Restoration Project is roughly located to the north of McCall up to Granite Mountain and east of New Meadows to Payette Lake on the McCall and New Meadows Ranger Districts.
The project includes forestry work centered on wildfire prevention, stream and wetlands improvements and recreation projects like a 3.5-acre expansion of the Gordon Titus winter parking lot.
Other improvements include upgrades to a boat ramp at Brundage Reservoir and a pedestrian bridge added to the Last Chance Campground.
Under the project, snowmobiling would be banned within the areas maintained by the Bear Basin Nordic Center. Motorized over the snow travel would also be banned at Granite Mountain, which already has a partial ban in place from Jan. 15 to March 31.
A main focus of the project is wildfire prevention on public, state and private land.
For many years the Payette has been focusing work to reduce the risk of wildfires in the Bear Basin and Ecks Flat west of McCall, and on Meadows Slope, east of New Meadows, said Brian Harris, Payette National Forest Public Affairs Officer.
The Granite Goose project is designed to address the area between Meadows Slope and Bear Basin and to the north in order to further reduce hazardous conditions that could threaten local communities in the event of a forest fire, Harris said.
Comments should be submitted through the project website by Feb. 3. The website can be found by visiting
https://www.fs.usda.gov/payette, clicking the “managing the land” tab and selecting “projects,” and then “Granite Goose Landscape Restoration Project.”
Work within the project could begin as soon as this summer, but the start date has not been finalized.
About 13,300 acres would be thinned, of which about 8,000 acres would include commercial logging.
About 36,000 acres of prescribed fire and non-commercial thinning would be done over 25 years.
Plans for watershed restoration include stream and meadow restoration, road decommissioning and the replacement of two culverts.
Some roads and trails could be decommissioned and removed, while others could be expanded or improved.
About 19 miles of road would be built or added to official maps, with 15 miles of that total dedicated to Forest Service use only.
About 67 miles of unofficial or unnecessary roads would be removed.
In the Goose Creek Trail area, a new bridge would be added, about four miles of motorized trail would be added and the trailhead would be expanded and improved.
About five miles of roads in the Bear Basin area would be closed to motorized traffic and the Upper and Lower Drain mountain bike trail would be closed to equestrians and pack animals.
In total, about seven miles of new, non-motorized trail would be built and an additional mile of existing trail would be added.
A trailhead and restroom would be built along Bear Basin Road.
In the Ecks Flat area, four miles of closed roads would be opened to motorized use and one parking lot would be built.
The project is a part of the Southwest Idaho Landscape project under the Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy, which saw the Boise and Payette National Forests receive about $59.5 million over the next 10 years to reduce the threat of wildfires.
