Groups sue Bitterroot National Forest over road policy
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) Wildlife advocates have asked the courts to require the Bitterroot National Forest to keep its limits on road building to preserve wildlife and bull trout habitat.
On Tuesday, four organizations filed a complaint in Missoula federal district court against the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over a 2023 change to the Bitterroot National Forest Management Plan that would allow the Forest Service to build more roads without considering how they’d affect endangered species.
They’ve also asked that the judge put any road building on hold until the case is resolved. The plaintiffs include Friends of the Bitterroot, Friends of the Clearwater, Native Ecosystems Council, and WildEarth Guardians and are represented by Earthjustice.
The 1987 Bitterroot Forest Management Plan had placed road-density limits on the forest to protect elk habitat. The density was to be limited to 1 to 2 miles per square mile. At the time, some regions of the forest had road densities that exceeded those limits, so the Bitterroot Forest planned to eliminate some roads to meet the standard. But more than half of the drainages retain most of their roads.
In September 2023, the Bitterroot Forest adopted Amendment 40 to the 1987 Forest Plan, which changed the elk habitat effectiveness plan. Part of the result was the limits on road densities were eliminated.
The plaintiffs argue that, even though the road density limits were intended to help elk, they had the added benefit of conserving grizzly bear and bull trout habitat. By approving Amendment 40 with little analysis, the Forest Service has approved the degradation of grizzly bear and bull trout habitat, the plaintiffs say.
Roads threaten grizzly bears by bringing more people and conflict into formerly remote areas and by pushing grizzly bears into sub-optimal habitat because grizzly bears, like elk, avoid roads, even when they’re closed. So the plaintiffs argue that more roads on the Bitterroot Forest would endanger grizzly bears in two ways: destroying secure habitat and making it more difficult for bears to move between recovery areas.
This is especially important now, because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is preparing to release an environmental impact statement by this summer on grizzly bear recovery in the Bitterroot ecosystem. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator Hilary Cooley said Wednesday that the agency was planning on recommending natural recovery, which would necessitate having secure wildlife corridors for grizzly migration.
In July 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a biological opinion of the amended Bitterroot Forest Plan that acknowledged the damaging effect roads can have on grizzlies and recommended that the forest maintain at least 95% of unroaded habitat that exists today.
The plaintiffs say the Fish and Wildlife Service needed to go further and look at how road density outside secure habitat could limit connectivity. They also questioned why the agency is allowing the Forest Service to count small parcels of land - as small as one acre - as secure habitat. Research by bear biologists have shown that grizzly bears need a a significant amount of habitat to support their dietary needs. Estimates of area requirements range from 2 to 8 square miles.
According to the complaint filed Tuesday, the Fish and Wildlife Service “justified its decision to allow the Forest Service to count small, one-acre fractions of unroaded land as secure habitat because ‘no current research on grizzly bear habitat use exists for the Bitterroot Ecosystem to inform a minimum size patch of secure habitat that grizzly bears might use.’”
Meanwhile, bull trout need cold, clear water to survive and spawn, and many tributaries in the Bitterroot are considered critical habitat for bull trout, which have been listed as threatened since 1999. In its Biological Opinion on the 2012 Bitterroot Forest Travel Management Plan, the Fish and Wildlife Service stated that “increasing traffic levels on unpaved roads have been correlated with increased fine sediment delivery to stream channels.” Research shows that such sediment pollution can contribute to stream temperature increases and fill in deep pools that trout need to escape the heat.
The Bitterroot Forest didn’t consult the Fish and Wildlife Service on whether Amendment 40 would affect bull trout. The Bitterroot Forest Biological Assessment included no analysis related to bull trout, concluding that no analysis is necessary.
“Allowing an increase in the number of roads on the Bitterroot National Forest will further diminish the wild character of the forest, fragment wildlife habitat, and irreparably harm existing ecosystems,” said Jim Miller, Friends of the Bitterroot president. “Extensive human intrusions into the forest have already done enough damage and the Forest Service cannot adequately maintain the existing road system. It is time to recognize the forest is a classroom and not a place to satisfy human wants and desires.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.