Judge considers delay of Garnet Mountain logging
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) A federal judge has less than two weeks to decide whether to halt a U.S. Bureau of Land Management project east of Missoula for its potential harm to grizzly bears or Canada lynx.
On Monday, Missoula federal district judge Dana L. Christensen heard arguments on whether five conservation organizations were likely to win their lawsuit against the Missoula BLM Office regarding a series of logging projects in the Garnet Mountains, known as the Clark Fork Face Project.
If they are likely to win, the judge would grant their request for an injunction against some but not all parts of the Clark Fork Face Project where the BLM would need to build more roads for access.
The Big River Thinning Project is an area of concern for plaintiffs because there are a number of roads that would be used to access those units. That is also lynx habitat and it’s an area that is important enough to enjoin,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Alizabeth Bronsdon.
The BLM has already accepted a bid for the preliminary work on the Big River Thinning Project, which is supposed to start on July 15. So Christensen needs to decide before then whether or not to grant the injunction. Three future timber sales are not included in the injunction request because they’ve yet to be sold.
The Clark Fork Face project, approved in April 2024, encompasses a mix of federal, state and private land in the Garnet Mountains mainly north of Interstate 90 from west of Clinton to east of Drummond and north to Greenough. Almost half of the 247,200-acre planning area is private land that was owned by the Stimson Lumber Company as recently as 2013, but which has been subdivided and sold to new residents. The BLM manages 10% of the land in the project area, with plots scattered mostly across the eastern side of the area.
The isolated nature of the BLM parcels is why the BLM’s approval of timber sales that require more roads would cause irreparable harm. Grizzly bears, lynx and even wolverine traverse the project area, trying to move between the wild lands of the Northern Continental Divide and those to the south, including the Pintler and Bitterroot-Selway wilderness areas. But with more trophy homes and roads being built on the former timber company land, the BLM parcels are increasingly the only islands of secure habitat, and forestry projects could further limit that, Bronsdon said."
The isolated nature of the BLM parcels is why the BLM’s approval of timber sales that require more roads would cause irreparable harm, Bronsdon said. Grizzly bears, lynx and even wolverine traverse the project area, trying to move between the wild lands of the Northern Continental Divide and those to the south, including the Pintler and Bitterroot-Selway wilderness areas. But with more trophy homes and roads being built on the former timber company land, the BLM parcels are increasingly the only islands of secure habitat, and forestry projects could further limit that, Bronsdon said.
“The area is an important stepping-stone area. In other words, the area is an established and active connectivity pathway for grizzly bears leaving the (Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem),” Bronsdon said. “As private land continues to develop in the next three decades, the Fish and Wildlife Service emphasizes that the importance of BLM lands to grizzly bears will increase.”
However, U.S. Department of Justice attorney Sean Duffy, arguing for the BLM, said the Big River Thinning Project was all hand-thinning and the contract didn’t include road work. So there would be no harm, Duffy said. In addition, the plaintiffs waited until eight months after the Clark Fork Face Project was approved to file their complaint and that apparent lack of urgency belies their claims of harm, Duffy said.
Bronsdon pointed out that many units of the Big River Thinning Project are also approved for timber harvest. So the ultimate purpose is to thin the units to make them easier to log, Bronsdon, so they will eventually build the roads. Duffy said the thinning project would have no road work so the injunction wasn’t needed. He offered to submit a BLM declaration that they wouldn’t build roads.
Following her justification of irreparable harm, Bronsdon moved to the merits of the case, which focus mainly on the roads that the BLM would use for its thinning and logging projects. Similar to other court battles over federal agency roads, this case revolves on how the agencies categorize their roads.
Roads are a huge threat for wildlife because they allow humans to invade deeper into wild areas that once served as refuge for grizzly bears, lynx, elk and other species. The higher the density of roads, the more animals tend to die or at least alter their behavior. If those species are protected, their harassment or death is considered a “take,” and the Fish and Wildlife Service needs to approve that.
When the BLM proposed to restore 19 miles of currently impassable road in the project area, likely to serve as haul roads, the plaintiffs claimed that the public would be more likely to use those roads so the BLM should modify its mileage and density calculations. In addition, the plaintiffs say the BLM should have to consult again with the Fish and Wildlife Service to make sure the biological opinion on the project still applies.
Christensen questioned whether the new roads would be haul roads. Bronsdon said all the roads mentioned in the project plan would be haul roads because “there’s nothing to say that they’re not.”
“Because the Clark Fork Face Project authorizes converting old roads that may be existing to some degree on the landscape into well-maintained open roads and haul routes, it authorizes on-the-ground action that agencies didn’t consider when analyzing effects to grizzly bears,” Bronsdon said.
DOJ attorney Emily Polachek said BLM roads were inventoried in 2011 and updated in 2021, so almost 14 of the 19 miles of road was already inventoried and the Fish and Wildlife Service accounted for it in the total mileage. The rest of the mileage was added after the fact because their absence was due to mapping errors, not activities on the ground, Polachek said.
When it comes to road density calculations, the plaintiffs use a different definition of “open road” than the BLM does, Polacheck said. The BLM definition of an open road is one that’s open to the public, not just passable. So the BLM analyzed the 19 miles of road as passable, because “there’s nothing to suggest any of these roads are impassable,” Polachek said.
“The FWS was reasonable when it says only some of these roads would have any effect, let alone an adverse effect, let alone take on grizzly bears,” Polachek said.
Lastly, Bronsdon said the BLM failed to consider the cumulative effects of all the other development and thinning work surrounding the project, such as the 8-year Coyote-Greenough Project on around 2,000 acres of state land to the north of the Clark Fork Face Project.
In response, Polacheck argued that the Coyote-Greenough Project wasn’t included in the project analysis because it was approved after the BLM had consulted with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Duffy added that the National Environmental Policy Act doesn’t require a cumulative effects analysis. Even so, the BLM looked at 18 possible non-BLM projects in the area and their cumulative effects on wildlife over three decades.
“They addressed how timber and fuels treatments could displace grizzlies, lynx and wolverine over the short-term, but it noted that they were expected to improve habitat over the long term,” Duffy said.
After about 90 minutes of arguments, Christensen said he’d consider the injunction and issue a decision as soon as possible.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.