USFS drops large logging, thinning project near Yellowstone

Darrell Ehrlick

(Daily Montanan) A large logging project near Cooke City and an entrance to Yellowstone National Park has been scrubbed by the U. S. Forest Service after conservation groups challenged the federal government, saying it was using unproven methods at the risk of several endangered species.

The Cooke City Fuels Project was withdrawn by the Forest Service and would have encompassed 19,921 acres. The purpose was to reduce the amount of fuels in order to reduce the threat of wildfire using a number of techniques, including “daylight thinning.” The Forest Service would have removed other trees and brush around the endangered Whitebark Pine trees as a means to bolster their chances of survival. However, the conservation groups which challenged the project said that there was no scientific research validating the technique.

Three conservation groups and an individual who brought the legal action in federal court said that the Forest Service’s own plans and documents outlining the project included the admission that the technique could wind up harming the pine tree stands, as well as imperil the habitat of other threatened or endangered species, including Canada lynx and grizzly bears.

Whitebark pine trees are threatened and considered a “keystone species.” They are susceptible to a disease, whitebark pine blister rust, and need the cool to cold climates of high elevations, which has been increasingly limited because of climate change.

The plan for the Cooke City project also estimated that the net loss to the American taxpayers would be $2.8 million if the project was completed.

On Thursday, Clint Kolarich, the Gardiner District Ranger signed off on the notice of withdrawal, saying that Jacqueline Buchanan, Deputy Chief for Ecosystem Management Coordination, authorized withdrawal of the decision.

The lawsuit had also claimed that the Forest Service disregarded wide swaths of designated Canada lynx habitat. Also, the suit pointed out that increased logging activities and road building in the area would disrupt grizzly bear habitat.

“The Forest Service claimed the project was going to protect Cooke City from wildfire, but the plan called for logging well beyond the wildland urban interface – which is why the vast majority of Cooke City residents who commented opposed the project,” said Mike Garrity of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, one of the groups that challenged the project. “We won on this issue when the federal district court ruled in our favor and stopped the Round Star logging project in the Flathead National Forest. We hope the Forest Service will now work to protect Cooke City from wildfires by helping residents ‘harden’ their homes against wildfires by having non-flammable roofs and decks and trimming trees next to their homes, not logging roadless areas miles away.”