Stimulus Money to Clearwater National Forest

 $17 million is a part of $247 million devoted to forests from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – and will be used to improve trail systems and Forest Service facilities. One area that is due to receive about $9 million is the Clearwater National Forest at Orofino. Here’s spokeswoman Elayne Murphy: “There are some maintenance needs with the buildings and we’re going to improve some of the interpretive features there including an interpretive trail and I think visitors will very much appreciate what will happen there. We have a number of work centers and forest facilities that needed some improvements and we got more than $4 million to work on those. For trails we got a big chunk of money, $4 million, we’re going to use this money to work on 1000 miles of trail that were in bad need of maintenance.”

 I had to ask the question…with people out of work, losing their homes and farms, should we be spending stimulus money on leisure activities like National Forests?

 “This will definitely put people to work. There are a lot of people who use our trails and they’re people on foot, on bicycles, on ATV’s, on horseback, they come to the area, they spend money with our merchants, they enjoy their National Forests.”