Lolo National Forest
The Lolo National Forest is a National Forest in the northwestern United States . It is located in the west of the US state Montana ; its western border is formed by the state border with Idaho . The Lolo National Forest covers an area of 8,000 km². The forest administration is located in Missoula .
The "Flathead Indian Reservation" connects to the north of the national forest. The somewhat disjointed area of the Lolo National Forest surrounds the city of Missoula , but does not entirely enclose it. There are also several neighboring national forests that border the Lolo National Forest, such as the Flathead National Forest , the Clearwater National Forest and the Idaho Panhandle National Forest .
In the Lolo National Forest there are four designated “ wilderness areas ”: The Scapegoat Wilderness and the Bob Marshall Wilderness are only partially located in the national forest area ; the Welcome Creek Wilderness and the Mission Mountains Wilderness are located entirely within the National Forest area. The Lolo National Forest was established in 1906; it was created by merging four different pre-existing forests that were combined for administrative purposes.
The Lolo National Forest lies west of the Continental Divide; it is influenced by continental and maritime climates. There are over 100 named lakes, nearly 1,000 named streams, and five rivers in the national forest; one of them is the Flathead River .
Within the national forest there are 17 different conifer species and five deciduous tree species; a total of 1,500 different plant species have been identified in the park, 250 of them neozoa. Some specimens of the giant thuja ( Thuja plicata ) in the Lolo National Forest reach heights of growth of 60 meters with tree diameters of 2.5 meters, making them the tallest trees in all of Montana.
60 species of mammals, 20 species of fish and 300 species of birds are known in the animal world of the national forest. Among the large mammals which includes brown bear ( Ursus arctos ), the American black bear ( Ursus americanus ), the Mountain Goat ( Oreamnos americanus ), the bighorn sheep ( Ovis canadensis ) elk , the moose ( Alces Alces ) and mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus ). Birds include the bald eagle ( Haliaeetus leucocephalus ) and the golden eagle ( Aquila chrysaetos ), the trumpeter swan ( Cygnus buccinator ) and the great blue heron ( Ardea herodias ).
There are 1,100 km of hiking trails in the Lolo National Forest; there are a dozen campgrounds.
Web links
- The Lolo National Forest at the USDA Forest Service
Coordinates: 47 ° 9 ′ 0 ″ N , 114 ° 27 ′ 0 ″ W.