Canada Lynx. Photo: USFWS.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Council on Wildlife and Fish, and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit in federal district court against the Custer/Gallatin National Forest to stop them from sacrificing habitat for lynx, grizzly bear, elk and whitebark pine trees just north of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, just north of Yellowstone National Park to subsidize the timber industry. It’s unfortunate to have to take a federal agency to court a third time over this logging project, but federal agencies have to follow the law, just like the rest of us.
The groups first sued to stop the Greater Red Lodge logging project west of Red Lodge, Montana in July 2015 and again 2021. In both cases, the Court ruled that the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act because the logging would have harmed Lynx Critical Habitat.
The project, now called Burnt Mountain, is back again and will occur at the same time in the same areas as the Red Lodge Mountain Fuels logging project.
They are effectively a single, landscape-scale logging project that the Forest Service illegally split into two. They were authorized on the same day, announced in the same letter from Beartooth District Ranger Amy Haas and will be offered as part of the same timber sale. Both projects authorize logging, burning, and road-building in the Willow, Nichols, and West Fork Rock Creek watersheds west of Red Lodge. Many of the Burnt Mountain South Units and RLM Project units overlap, adjoin, and, in some cases, interlock like puzzle pieces.
To get around the requirements to protect lynx habitat and actually analyze the effects of logging on wildlife, the Forest Service authorized the logging projects under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act exempts logging projects from the environmental review process generally required for federal actions under the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA, so long as the project is no greater than 3,000 acres, located within the Wildland Urban Interface, and does not present any extraordinary circumstances warranting additional NEPA review.
When the Projects are properly considered as one landscape-scale project, they are 3,211 acres in size, exceeding the limit adopted by Congress for a project exempt from NEPA.
The two logging projects are in the Custer Gallatin National Forest and directly adjacent to the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area. Together, they would bulldoze 9.5 miles of new logging roads to log almost 2,500 acres over a period of 10 to 15 years. The project also includes clearcutting over 409 acres of mature forests in federally-designated lynx critical habitat and grizzly bear habitat, both of which are listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.
Since this area is federally-designated lynx critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act, the Forest Service has a big problem with their proposal for clearcutting, since clearcuts completely destroy lynx habitat. To get around the legal requirements for maintaining habitat to protect ESA-listed species the agency arbitrarily decided to pretend that a 3,200-acre logging project is instead two completely unrelated logging projects that happen to be right next to each other.
No matter what the problem is, the Forest Service solution is always more logging and bulldozing more logging roads. We can fireproof homes by installing non-flammable roofs and decks and removing most vegetation next to a home – but we cannot fireproof forests. The harsh reality, undeniably proven by all the best available science and certainly backed up by this year’s intense wildfire activity in the West, is that more logging and logging roads not only won’t stop fires, but they inevitably lead to more invasive noxious weeds, dead grizzly bears, and fewer elk and lynx.
Suing the most powerful government in the world is not easy or cheap. Please consider helping the Alliance for the Wild Rockies fight the Trump administration’s plans for clearcutting endangered species habitat in the great Yellowstone Ecosystem. Please also consider supporting Counterpunch for running columns like this.
