Lawsuit: Tally Lake logging project adds roads, destroys old-growth
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) Conservation groups are suing to stop a logging project west of Kalispell and Whitefish, saying it interferes with grizzly bear connectivity and would further eliminate old-growth forest.
On Monday, four organizations filed a complaint against the Flathead National Forest for approving the Cyclone Bill Logging Project on the Tally Lake Ranger District and asked the Missoula federal district court to grant an injunction to stop the project from proceeding. The groups include the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Council on Wildlife and Fish, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection and Native Ecosystems Council.
“Over the last decade, the Tally Lake Ranger District has run roughshod over the old-growth forests and wildlife habitat west of Whitefish, authorizing project-after-project without ever considering the overall impact of their logging and roadbuilding apparatus,” said Mike Garrity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies executive director, in a release. “They have ignored how their litany of projects deters grizzly bears from connecting between recovery zones. They have ignored how logging is contributing to a mass die-off of species dependent on old growth forests, and how it is ruining lynx critical habitat. This death by a thousand cuts must stop.”
The Cyclone Bill project area, more than 41,000 acres with Tally Lake at its northeast edge, includes land belonging to private owners and the state but 72% belongs to the U.S. Forest Service, according to court records. Almost 9,200 acres would be commercially logged, including areas to be clearcut, while another 3,100 acres would be thinned and burned, requiring the construction of 11.4 miles of new permanent roads and 2.5 miles of new temporary roads.
The Flathead National Forest released a draft environmental assessment of the project in August and finalized its assessment and decision on March 3 after receiving six objections, including those from the four plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs say the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service didn’t bother to consider how those additional roads would make an over-roaded district even worse for grizzly bears trying to migrate the 35 miles from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to the Cabinet-Yaak Recovery Area.
The grizzly population in the Cabinet-Yaak area is dangerously small, partly because few bears have successfully crossed the Salish Demographic Connectivity Area, which includes the Tally Lake District. But modeling of grizzly bear migration identifies the Tally Lake District as having high value as a migration corridor. So why is migration so limited?
The plaintiffs say it’s due to the relatively dense network of roads and trails in the Salish area, originally built for logging - the Tally Ranger District is speckled with clearcut areas - but now used for private access and recreation. The road density already exceeds that recommended for female grizzly bear habitat, but the project’s environmental assessment and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biological assessment didn’t calculate the existing road density, let alone the density after more roads are built. For that reason, both agencies violated the Endangered Species Act.
The project area is also in critical lynx habitat.
The Fish and Wildlife Service did say that the project is likely to adversely affect grizzly bears, since roads pose the most imminent threat to grizzly bears and their habitat, bringing in more people and conflict. For that reason, bears will avoid roads even if they aren’t being used. The Service added that grizzly bears using the area “may already be experiencing disturbance effects in some areas due to the under-use of suitable habitat because of the existing condition.” Only 5-14% of the area qualifies as secure grizzly habitat.
Add to that the fact that there’s another large logging project immediately north of the Cyclone Bill that the Flathead Forest approved less than a year before.
The Round Star Logging Project is about the same size as Cyclone Bill and is being logged for the same reasons: to reduce wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface, improve forest resilience and increase timber production. The Round Star will add more than 6,300 acres of commercial logging, another 19 miles of new permanent road and 3.4 miles of temporary road to the area, further endangering any grizzly bears moving through the area.
The plaintiffs say the Flathead Forest should have analyzed two projects as one using an environmental impact statement instead of splitting them up. All the activity planned for the next 10 years creates a significant barricade for bear migration, the lawsuit says. Or at the very least, the environmental analysis should have looked at the cumulative effects of the two projects, in addition to a handful of others, that are being logged at the same time right next to each other.
Finally, the plaintiffs object to the logging of old-growth stands, which make up 18% of the Cyclone Bill area. The project approves more than 280 acres of old-growth to be commercially logged and another 290 will be thinned, but the environmental assessment didn’t describe the old-growth areas or clarify what trees would remain. In addition, even though the Forest Plan requires the retention of old-growth structure in adjacent areas, the Forest Service plans to clearcut units around the old-growth areas, leaving no protection and no trees that could eventually become old-growth.
The plaintiffs say the resulting sterile environment will hurt several species that depend on the complexity of old-growth forests, including flammulated owls, northern goshawks and black-back woodpeckers. But the environmental assessment didn’t address how such species could be harmed.
“Old growth habitat, which has the highest density and diversity of birds nesting in tree cavities, is especially important for birds in western Montana,” Garrity said. "Not only did the Forest Service ignore its own old-growth retention requirements, the agency failed to analyze the impacts on a host of old-growth dependent wildlife.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.