The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation rolled out the red carpet for Jim Hubbard, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment. Four months after addressing RMEF membership at its Elk Camp national convention in Utah, Hubbard visited RMEF headquarters in Missoula, Montana.

One day after taking part in a roundtable with area constituents focused on the importance of active forest management, Hubbard visited with RMEF leadership and took part in a project tour just west of Missoula. Called “Frenchtown Face,” the habitat stewardship project covered more than 10,000 acres and received RMEF funding in 2015 and 2018. It highlights the importance of active management, timber harvest, overall forest health and the reduction of catastrophic wildfire, prescribed burning and getting sunlight back on to the forest floor. Species that benefit from the work include elk, whitetail and mule deer, wild turkey, upland game birds and others.

The U.S. Forest Service is an agency of the USDA that administers the nation’s 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which cover 193 million acres. The RMEF-USFS partnership runs long and deep. To date, the two organizations combined to carry out more than 3,200 conservation and hunting heritage outreach projects that protected or enhanced more than 3.3 million acres.