BUTTE — State and federal officials recently toured a forest area north of Butte to show they can work together to better manage forest land.
The US Forest Service and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation met on Friday at federal land near Elk Park in Jefferson County.
They're promoting a project where the state DNRC manages timber sales on federal land in a combined effort to remove beetle-kill trees and help make the forest safer in the event of wild fires.
"We can fight fire by doing good timber harvest and healthy forest investments, you know, think stands of dead lodgepole are almost impossible to put firefighters into, and we don't want to risk their lives in these types of stands," DNRC director John Tubbs explained.
The 10,000 acres in Elk Park is one of several project areas the two agencies are working together on across the state.
