Apparently, an Idaho man didn't pay close enough attention to that part of history class to understand that frontier law was long past.
U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officials recently cited the man after he'd chopped down nearly 70 trees to build his cabin in the woods in the South Fork of Lolo Creek.
Walking past a stack of plywood and tree stumps marked with blue paint Monday morning, Hilshey came to a clearing shaved clean of vegetation. The man's tarpaper-lined cabin is gone, but there's still a pile of other junk waiting to be hauled away. A pair of large charcoal black fire rings scar the otherwise lush green forest floor.
The man - whose name the Forest Service said it couldn't reveal quite yet - was ordered to clean up the site by mid-June. The agency is still waiting for him to finish the job.
Hilshey can only wish this was a rare case of people abusing nearby national forest lands.
“Public lands are taking a large amount of abuse from a small percentage of the public,” Hilshey said. “My office receives numerous calls every week from people reporting violations they've witnessed. We take their reports very seriously.”
Hilshey doesn't have to travel far in the South Fork of Lolo Creek to look at other places where people have misbehaved.
Just last week, a woman guiding a pack string was set upon first by a pair of aggressive llamas just a mile or so down the road from the homestead site. After quieting down her stock from that unexpected meeting, she decided to continue her ride up a road closed to motorized vehicle traffic.
She hadn't made it too far before she encountered four men riding all-terrain vehicles on the closed road.
“She stopped to tell them they were on a road closed to ATVs,” Hilshey said. “The men were carrying weapons. She said they told her, ‘We don't care what the Forest Service says. We'll do what we want.' They were very hostile to the woman.”
Just a week before - within a five-minute drive from the spot the woman was accosted - members of a family reunion were jolted out of a dead sleep when a truck pulled up to a locked gate at about 2 a.m. The family had acquired a Forest Service permit to camp in the meadow behind the gate.
The truck pulled up to the gate and its occupants used a spotlight to sweep over the campers.
Minutes later, the sounds of a racing engine and the screech of twisting steel reverberated through the forest as the truck's occupants attempted to pull the gate over with their vehicle.
“They'd hooked up to the gate and done their best to tear it down,” Hilshey said. “They bent it up and broke the lock. I think it was unnerving for the family camped there.”
Hilshey doesn't have to travel far to show other examples of people tearing up the landscape. A campsite is filled with emptied aluminum beer cans. A pair of 300-pound boulders is pulled away from the edge of a trail closed to traffic. Signs are peppered with bullet holes.
“This kind of activity isn't localized to this one spot,” Hilshey said. “It's found throughout the Missoula Ranger District. This is just a snapshot of what goes on in just this one area. We're seeing a lot of it all over the national forest.
“People are littering. There's all kinds of vandalism. People are shooting our signs. They cover our restrooms in graffiti. Fence posts are pulled down and burned in bonfires. People ram our gates. The forest is being used as a dumping ground for everything from lawn waste to refrigerators.”
As Missoula and the surrounding area grows, Forest Service officials expect to see the problem get worse.
“The kinds of problems we're seeing are symptomatic of the larger issue of growth in the Missoula Valley,” said Andy Kulla, resource staff officer on the Lolo National Forest's Missoula District. “We're starting to see the volume of use seen in urban parks and the kind of damage and vandalism that goes along with it.”
Kulla estimates the Missoula District spends between $10,000 and $15,000 a year doing repairs and cleaning up garbage.
“In some places, we can't even keep up with it,” he said. “The money comes out of our general recreation operations budget. There is no special funding for vandalism.”
The agency has tried educating the general public with warning tickets and stern lectures.
“People we stop know they're not doing the right thing,” Kulla said. “We hear them say things like, ‘Yes, I know I'm wrong, but I didn't think you'd be up here' or ‘I've been doing this for years.' We're so rich with recreational opportunities on national forest lands around here that people think they can do anything they want.”
The stern lectures are about to become a thing of the past. People breaking the law can expect to be served a citation that can run as high as $500.
“We're hoping tickets can be a constructive educational tool,” Kulla said.
The Forest Service hopes that people using national forest lands will help them put a stop to illegal behavior.
The Bitterroot National Forest has created the Bitterroot Citizen Watch program that encourages residents to report illegal activity on specially designed notepads. The cooperative program between the Forest Service, Ravalli County Sheriff's Office and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has been effective, said Deb Gale, the Bitterroot's wilderness and trail's program manager.
“It's been amazing how much information we get off of these things,” Gale said. “We can't be everywhere. We really do depend on the public to help us out.”
Kulla hopes to have a similar program in place sometime this summer.
People need to understand that Missoula and the surrounding area is growing and that creates additional pressures on nearby public lands, said Missoula District Ranger Maggie Pittman.
“There's a general lack of respect in certain places,” Pittman said. “There are some people that feel if they don't see us out there enforcing the rules, then they can do whatever they want.”
If people want to see that stop, they need to do whatever they can to help.
“I really feel that every citizen has a seat at the public lands table,” Pittman said. “They all get to debate all of our management proposals. It's also critical they help us manage and protect what we currently have. That should be our gift to future generations.”
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at pbackus@missoulian.com
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