Groups challenge third USFS logging project over lynx
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) Three organizations are suing to stop the Forest Service from logging in a remote region of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest that serves as important habitat for threatened wildlife.
On Monday, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council on Wildlife and Fish sued the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in Missoula federal court to stop the Selway-Saginaw logging project and to challenge another instance of the Forest Service’s recent reduction of what qualifies as Canada lynx habitat.
“We are deeply disappointed that the government would authorize this destructive project on our public lands considering the number of court rulings that have found similar projects illegal because such projects violate a number of federal laws designed to protect threatened wildlife," said Mike Garrity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies executive director.
In the Beaverhead Mountains along the Montana-Idaho border, about 8 miles south of Jackson, the Selway-Saginaw logging project would authorize commercial clearcuts - now referred to as “regeneration harvest” - on 41 units totaling 4,181 acres, according to the project Final Decision Notice. Although the Forest Service once limited clearcuts to 40 acres, only nine of the 41 units are smaller than 40 acres. One is as large as 369 acres. Another 2,156 acres would receive thinning and prescribed burning.
Some of the units are located in areas defined by the Beaverhead-Deerlodge forest plan as “Lands Not Suitable for Timber Production but Timber Harvest is Permitted to Meet Other Resource Objectives.” Most units surround the West Big Hole Inventoried Roadless Area, and about 100 acres identified for logging are within the Tash Peak Roadless Area farther south.
Finally, almost 70 miles of road would be reconstructed to serve as haul roads and 11 miles of temporary road would be built. One road will be built right on the boundary of the West Big Hole Inventoried Roadless Area, according to the decision notice.
Since the area is not in the wildland-urban interface - there are only two campgrounds in the region - the project isn’t intended for wildfire management. Instead, Dillon District Ranger Sara Rouse and Wisdom District Ranger Kristen Thompson approved the 10-year project in May 2024 for the purpose of achieving “forest plan timber and vegetation management goals.” The commercial clearcuts are for “economic benefit and contribute to the product utilization forest plan goal.” Some vegetation management is to reduce conifer encroachment.
However, because the project area is in remote, wild country, it's critical wildlife habitat, a characteristic that the district rangers didn’t consider in their decision, according to the complaint filed Monday. The plaintiffs say the logging activities could harm grizzly bears and Canada lynx, which both have federal protection, and could even harm sage grouse in nearby leks. In addition, because the Forest Service conducted an abbreviated environmental assessment, that information wasn’t provided to the public, the complaint said.
Prior to 2020, no lynx were documented in the area but much of the project was identified as lynx habitat, divided into several lynx analysis units or LAUs. Lynx prefer to prey on snowshoe hare in thick forests where they have less competition from other predators and less interaction with humans. Then in 2020, biologists documented at least two observations of Canada lynx in the area, enough to qualify it as “occupied habitat,” which created more federal requirements for habitat protection.
However, also in 2020, the Forest Service under the Trump administration redrew the LAUs and, in the process, eliminated 1.1 million acres of lynx habitat on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest. The 10 LAUs in the project area were combined into three, which changes several calculations in favor of logging, the complaint says.
In this respect, this project is similar to the Pintler Face Project along the southeastern edge of the Anaconda Pintler Wilderness and the Greenhorn project in the Gravelly Mountains. Both have used the 2020 reduction in lynx habitat to increase the areas where logging can occur. Both projects have been challenged for that reason and the Forest Service withdrew the Greenhorn project.
While the project area isn’t in a grizzly bear recovery area, it is in a region that serves as a prime grizzly migration corridor between the Greater Yellowstone and the Bitterroot and Northern Continental Divide recovery areas. Grizzly bears have been documented in the Beaverhead Mountains and the Big Hole Valley.
The plaintiffs say the clearcutting and addition of roads would reduce secure habitat in the area by more than 800 acres. That’s part of the reason the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biological opinion issued in December 2023 found that the project “may affect and is likely to adversely affect” grizzly bear and whitebark pine.
Garrity pointed out that grizzlies have to be able to migrate between the recovery areas to prevent each population from being forever isolated to the point that they suffer from inbreeding.
"Almost everyone wants grizzlies to recover and eventually be removed from the protection of the Endangered Species Act, but before this can happen, we need one connected population of grizzlies in the Northern Rockies. Yet the Forest Service is pushing ahead with this logging and burning project, which the Forest Service’s own estimates say will cost taxpayers $555,000," Garrity said. “This makes no sense.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com