As Montanans choke on summer smoke a federal policy about firefighting helicopters is receiving a lot of criticism from state republicans and democrats at the highest levels of government.

The UH-1H helicopter (a.k.a. "Huey") is one of the resources Montana DNRC uses to fight fires fast. There are five stationed around Western Montana, including one in Missoula, but there are significant limitations on where these helicopters can go.

"The federal government has a policy and regulation in place that will not allow us to use the very same helicopters that we are using to fight fires on state and private ground to fight fires on federal ground," explained U.S. Senator Steve Daines. "We have had examples where we could have put our Hueys in operation within a half hour, to help on first attack and go put a fire out, but, instead, we had to wait four or five hours before a helicopter contracted with the federal government was permitted to go do that."

The time it takes to get to the fire is, of course, important as the longer a fire burns, the more difficult it is to put out. One of the big successes in the 2015 firefighting year has been the swift outage of numerous Montana fire starts that were never able to burn past an acre.

Daines isn't alone in his criticism of the federal helicopter policy, Governor Steve Bullock has also written to department heads for change.

"I was on the phone yesterday (Tuesday, August 25) with the head of the U.S. Forest Service, Tom Tidwell, asking 'How do we remove this regulation," Daines said. "How do we get a line that says we can put these resources in play?' I wrote a letter to Secretary Vilsack this week as well, putting pressure on him. We are getting some good discussions. Governor Bullock and I, and others are working together on this; this is just one of those nonsense federal regulations that needs to get changed."

Daines has been touring Montana recently, touting reforms to federal fire management policy. There are two policies he has been emphasizing, one titled "The Healthy Forests Initiative," which has not been given a bill number. The other, called the "Wildfire Disaster Funding Act,"

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