MISSOULA (AP) -- A former field leader for the environmental group Earth First! has been removing trees from his property near here and says he hopes collaboration will become a mainstay in forest management.

A decade ago, Jake Kreilick was willing to go to jail as a forest activist for Earth First!, a group known for sensational tactics that included chaining members to bulldozers and sitting in trees targeted for logging. Kreilick's nonviolent efforts to keep old-growth forests intact landed him behind bars more than once, and he says he is proud of his actions.

A couple of years ago, however, Kreilick found himself helping with the removal of about 40 trees on his 25-plus acres near Missoula following a beetle outbreak in lodgepole pine.

''I did my first logging job when I took out those lodgepole,'' Kreilick said.

Last winter, loggers cut another 50 green trees around his home, to let the sunshine in and for fire safety. Trucks hauled the logs to a sawmill.

Having a home surrounded by trees has changed how Kreilick looks at the woods, because wildfire is now a big consideration in the way he lives. With his property linked to just one road in a narrow valley, he knows getting out during a fire could be difficult. It is enough of a concern that Kreilick and his family produced a plan to follow in the event of a fire.

''We'll go to the creek,'' he said. ''There's a vapor barrier there. As a family, we talked with the kids about that possibility.''

Kreilick has become an outspoken advocate of work to reduce fire fuels where residential development meets wild land. He is on the steering committee of the new FireSafe Montana Council, which advocates a variety of methods to create a space around homes for defense against fire.

Kreilick also is the restoration coordinator for WildWest Institute, an offshoot of the Native Forest Network, which he founded.

In 2000, a year of catastrophic wildfires in the Bitterroot Valley, Kreilick and his family moved from Missoula to the woods and he noted previous owners of the property had not done much to reduce the thick underbrush, saplings and larger trees.

''It was a powder keg waiting to be lit,'' he said.

Soon after the 2000 fire season, Kreilick and his neighbors began working with the local fire district and the U.S. Forest Service to thin the trees. Over the next two years, 17 truckloads of woody fire fuel was hauled off.

Eighty percent or more of the neighbors have now undertaken thinning and other fire-prevention work on their lands, Kreilick said.

''We, as neighbors, still probably haven't done enough to protect our own little places, but it's certainly a lot more firesafe now than it was in 2000,'' he said.

His efforts didn't stop at his property line.

Kreilick and other members of the Grant Creek Homeowners Association worked with the Forest Service on a plan to reduce fuels on federal lands in the area. The result is the Lolo National Forest's Grant Creek Fuel Reduction Project, which includes commercial logging.