Advocates sue USFS for shrinking grizzly habitat standards
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) Grizzly bear advocates are suing a second national forest in Montana for claiming grizzly bears need only an acre of forest to be safe.
On Tuesday, three wildlife advocacy organizations filed a complaint in Missoula federal district court against the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for changing their definition of what qualifies as secure grizzly bear habitat without considering the ramifications and the best-available science. The three plaintiffs are Native Ecosystems Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Council on Wildlife and Fish.
The Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest started off on the right foot, according to the plaintiffs, when it approved its most recent Forest Plan in 2021. At that time, the national forest chose to use the best-available science, which defined secure grizzly habitat as a minimum of 2,500 acres. The Fish and Wildlife Service concurred with that choice.
Human activity threatens grizzly bears in a number of ways. Roads are the worst threat, because they bring people into areas where bears live and people can stress, injure or kill bears by hitting them on the road or shooting them. So research has shown that bears survive better when they have at least 2,500 acres where there’s less chance of encountering people. That much space allows a female bear to meet her daily foraging needs without having to cross or forage near motorized routes.
The Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest is in a critical location for grizzlies, because it includes parts of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly recovery area and it has regions south of the NCDE that biologists have identified as prime corridors for grizzly migration between the NCDE and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem recovery area.
But then, in June 2024, the Helena-Lewis and Clark Forest changed the definition of secure habitat in the Forest Plan. Within the NCDE recovery area, it would remain 2,500 acres, but anywhere outside the NCDE, one acre would be sufficient, according to the Forest Plan. In April 2025, the Fish and Wildlife Service signed off on that, even though the Helena-Lewis and Clark Forest provided no justification or new science to back it up.
The plaintiffs argue that one acre is too small to provide safety for a grizzly bear. They question how a grizzly bear that needs 2,500 acres in one place can suffice with one acre in another place. The size change also allows a national forest to claim it has more secure grizzly habitat than it has when it can only count areas of 2,500 acres or more.
"Changing the parameters of what qualifies on paper as habitat doesn't make more habitat. A one-acre island of forest surrounded by roads isn't secure habitat—it's a death trap for a bear trying to survive there," said Sara Johnson, Native Ecosystems Council director and a former Forest Service wildlife biologist. "It just makes it easier to approve more logging and more roads while ignoring the real consequences for grizzly bears. The law doesn’t allow it, and we will apparently have to be the people who say no."
Recently, the Helena-Lewis and Clark Forest developed a 17,700-acre logging and burning project south of Elliston and U.S. Highway 12 between Garrison Junction and Helena. The Larabee Hat Project, approved last August, includes 1,266 acres of clearcuts, 1,854 acres of “intermediate” logging and 785 acres of pre-commercial thinning, serviced by an additional 17 miles of new temporary roads. Logging would take 3.5 years.
The problem for grizzly bear advocates is the location of the project: It’s within the grizzly connectivity area where bears are known to be just south of the NCDE. Because it’s outside the NCDE, the logging roads can be built through and logging and burning activity can take place within parcels of once-secure grizzly habitat, because now, the Forest Service can cut them down to an acre.
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological opinion said the project wasn’t likely to jeopardize the existence of grizzly bears but based the opinion on the Forest Service’s claim that one acre was enough for secure habitat.
The plaintiffs say the Fish and Wildlife Service didn’t analyze how shrinking secure habitat to one acre would affect grizzly bears or determine whether the change put grizzlies in jeopardy, so the incidental take permit - which allows only a certain amount of harm to bears - for the project may be insufficient.
So they are asking the judge to send the two agencies back to analyze how the change in habitat could affect grizzlies and to come up with a scientifically sound justification for using only one acre.
Wildlife advocates are making a similar argument in a lawsuit against the Bitterroot National Forest, which also amended its forest plan to use one acre as secure grizzly habitat so it could build more roads. During oral arguments a month ago, Friends of the Bitterroot argued that an area the size of a football field “can’t possibly provide for the biological needs of a grizzly bear.” Notably, Missoula federal district judge Dana Christensen asked the Forest Service attorney why habitat patches needed for bear security would vary in size just because they’re in a different location.
Forest Service attorney Peter Torstenson answered that the Forest Service determined that even small patches were important to connectivity so they didn’t want to exclude them. Christensen has yet to issue his ruling.
Prior to that, the Forest Service lost another court case after the Custer-Gallatin National Forest tried to reduce the secure habitat size to 10 acres.
“It is puzzling why the Forest Service would try this again since we won a court case on a similar issue last year in which these same federal agencies tried to shrink the definition of secure habitat for grizzlies to 10 acres, which is ridiculous for these wide-ranging bears,” said Mike Garrity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies director, in a statement. “The Court ruling was very clear: ‘In relying on a 10-acre patch size to define grizzly bear secure habitat in the absence of any scientific evidence showing that such acreage provides adequate habitat, the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to use the best available science in violation of the Endangered Species Act,’ adding ‘grizzly bears in other ecosystems have been found to need upwards of 2,500 acres of secure habitat.’”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.