west including other ownerships, except for a Forest Service Road #4325 and some small cutting 

 units (up to 40 acres in size) in Sections 18 and 7. Douglas fir stands in Sections 21 and 28 

 connect to an unharvested area in Sections 27, 22, 15, 10, and 3. Several species potentially 

 found in the project area are associated with old growth habitats, such as flammulated owl, boreal 

 owl, black-backed woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, northern goshawk, fisher, marten, and lynx 

 (Henjumetal. 1994:184). 



Old cutting units up to 40 acres in size are located northwest and southwest of the project area. 

 Some of these stands have scattered old Douglas fir but most have no overstory cover and few 

 remnant old growth attributes. 



Old growth refers to forested areas that are in the later stages of stand development. They are 

 generally dominated by relatively large old trees, contain a wide variety of tree sizes, exhibit 

 some degree of multi-storied structure, have signs of decadence, such as rot and spike-topped 

 trees, and contain standing snags and large down logs. 



The State Land Board, who provides direction for management of trust lands, chose the Green et 

 al. definition of Old Growth to be used for managing old growth on school trust lands. During 

 project planning DNRC assessed and identified which stands met the Green et al. definition. 



We have no way of knowing exactly how much old growth was present at any one time across 

 the landscape. Historic age class distributions have been estimated, using historic forest 

 inventory data from across western Montana (Losensky 1997). 



The following table provides the current age class distributions for lodgepole pine stands at three 

 different analysis levels. 



Table 3-11 



Age Class Distribution For Lodgepole Pine Stands 



Within the Anaconda Unit 



In comparison to the historical age class distribution, existing stands at most levels of analysis 

 are shifted toward older, 101 -old stand and old stand, age classifications. This is likely due to 



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