Army Corps of Engineers had transferred title of the lands to the 

 Department. The Department has since been unable to allocate 

 adequate funds for habitat improvement, and without these funds the 

 full potential of the units will not be realized. Without an 

 increase in winter range grazing capacity, an increase in big game 

 winter populations has not been possible. Therefore, due to the 

 lack of operation and maintenance funds, these units have only 

 minimally mitigated the impacts to the big game populations re- 

 sulting from the construction of the Libby Dam project. 



Another problem inherent to the land acquisition program was 

 the length of time between the initiation of the Libby Dam project 

 and the final transfer of the lands to the Montana Department of 

 Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Construction of the Libby Dam project was 

 initiated in 1966, Congress authorized funds for acquisition of 

 wildlife grazing lands in 1974, the U.S. Ai my Corps of Engineers 

 purchased the three management units between 1978 and 1980, and 

 final tranfer of the lands to the Montana Department of Fish, Wild- 

 life and Parks occurred in 1982 resulting in a time period of 16 

 years. During this time, inflation consumed a large portion of the 

 purchasing power of the mitigation funds allowing for only a minimal 

 acreage of mitigation lands to be purchased. Many opportunities to 

 purchase lands of high wildlife value for lower cost were lost 

 during this period due to no authorization for funding and lack of 

 agreement on how the mitigation process should proceed. 



2) Habitat Manipulation 



The U.S. Forest Service agreed to conduct habitat improvements 

 on 6,971 acres of wildlife habitat on Forest Service lands adjacent 

 to the Libby Dam project. Ihese projects were to be conducted by 

 the U.S. Forest Service with funds provided by the U.S. Army Corps 

 of Engineers. Approximately 78 percent of these projects were 

 completed as of the end of Fiscal Year 1974 (U.S. Dep. Agric. un- 

 publ. files). Since then the remainder of the projects have been 

 completed (U.S. Dep. Agric. unpubl. files, D. Godtel 1983, pers. 

 commun). These projects included habitat manipulations for the 

 improvement of big game winter range (6,814 acres) and habitat 

 improvement on 5 units to benefit waterfowl (157 acres). 



Big game habitat manipulations were varied and included log- 

 ging, thinning, slashing, broadcast burning and/or seeding. These 

 treatments were completed separately or in combination in order to 

 produce the desired results. In conjunction with these projects, 

 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also funded the Montana Department 

 of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to monitor the vegetative and wildlife 

 responses to the treatments. 



Habitat manipulations were conducted on big game winter ranges 

 and were one-time treatments. Review of the annual monitoring 

 reports (Campbell 1972, 1973, Campbell and P(noche 1974, Knoche 

 1974, Knoche and Brown 1975) indicated the desired results may not 

 have been obtained and the full potential of this mitigation mea- 



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