Group sues to save bull trout streams from logging damage
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) A nonprofit group is suing to stop the Lolo National Forest from logging areas around some of the best remaining bull trout spawning tributaries of the central Clark Fork River.
On Friday, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a complaint against the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Missoula federal district court, challenging the approval of the second part of the Redd Bull logging project on the Lolo National Forest.
The complaint says the project will further harm threatened bull trout because of the haul roads planned along some of the few streams where bull trout live and spawn.
“Bull trout lost an estimated 60% of their historical habitat range before they were even listed as ‘threatened’ on the Endangered Species List,” said Mike Garrity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies executive director. “Yet the Forest Service wants to bulldoze and clearcut some of Montana's few remaining, most pristine, bull trout watersheds that flow out of the Great Burn of 1910 area. Given the bull trout's struggle against extinction, we're going to court to halt this highly destructive project.”
The Lolo Forest started scoping on the Redd Bull project south of St. Regis in the Superior Ranger District in August 2019 and put out a draft proposal a year later. After the draft document received more than 50 public comments and after consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service, former Lolo Forest supervisor Carolyn Upton decided to divide the project into two parts: one with watersheds not known to contain bull trout - Redd Bull 1, which includes Dry Creek, Cold Creek and Twomile Creek - and one with watersheds that do - Redd Bull 2, which includes Ward Creek and the two forks of Little Joe Creek.
After the draft proposal was released, the Fish and Wildlife Service expressed concern about the general decline of bull trout in the middle Clark Fork area. The Service noted that the Little Joe watershed is “one of the most important bull trout spawning reaches not only in the Redd Bull projects area but potentially even the entire Middle Clark Fork River bull trout core area.” Ward Creek is critical bull trout habitat, but the presence of bull trout has become sporadic since the population has declined over the past two decades.
Although parts of the Redd Bull project - installing culverts and rerouting roads - were intended to improve bull trout habitat in general, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed alternatives in bull trout watersheds that would last longer but cost a little more. Since Upton wanted to start logging sooner rather than later, she approved Redd Bull 1 in September 2023 and put Redd Bull 2 on hold, saying she needed more time to evaluate the options.
That pleased Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which had submitted comments about the threats to bull trout in the Redd Bull project, particularly roads that would add more sediment to spawning streams.
“All that we were concerned about was all the logging or clearcutting that they were going to do in bull trout watersheds. So when they signed the first decision, they dropped all the logging in bull trout watersheds. I wrote a letter to the district ranger saying ‘thank you, we won’t sue,’” Garrity said. “But with Redd Bull 2, they’re doing all the logging in the bull trout watersheds that they didn’t do earlier.”
In September 2024, Upton approved Redd Bull 2. Her decision authorized logging on 6,421 acres over 15 years, including 1,404 acres of commercial thinning and 4,903 acres of clearcuts, ranging in size from 43 to 973 acres. But it’s the proposed roads that bother the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. The decision authorizes the construction of 9 miles of temporary roads and 3 miles of new permanent system roads. More worrying is the log hauling that will go through more than 23 miles of the riparian habitat conservation area along occupied bull trout streams.
The Forest Service says it will use best management practices to reduce the amount of sediment that runs off roads into the streams. But the Forest Service has also noted that best management practices have “varying amounts of success” and are “expected to be effective for 3-5 years,” according to court records.
The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a biological opinion that said the 15-year project has the potential to “affect the persistence of individual bull trout for approximately two bull trout generations.” But ultimately, the Service concluded the Redd Bull project wouldn’t affect bull trout at a range-wide scale and the improvements would be beneficial for bull trout over the long-term so the project was not likely to destroy or adversely modify designated bull trout critical habitat.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies said both the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act when they failed to set an environmental baseline for bull trout habitat in the Ward and Little Joe watersheds or analyze how the logging activities would affect bull trout.
For more than two decades, other federal projects have been approved in the middle Clark Fork area, because the Fish and Wildlife Service has said each one individually wouldn’t have much of an effect. But the Service has acknowledged that the projects “have all resulted in some varying levels of adverse effects to bull trout, ranging from sub-lethal to lethal effects.” In September 2024, the agency issued a Species Status Assessment that found bull trout populations in the Middle Clark Fork River area are “significantly decreasing.”
Because the agencies didn’t do a full environmental study and look at the direct, indirect and cumulative effects all these projects had on bull trout in the middle Clark Fork, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies is accusing the agencies of violating the National Environmental Policy Act. They add that the project could also negatively affect grizzly bears, Canada lynx, wolverine and elk. They are also asking the judge for an injunction on the Redd Bull 2 project while the lawsuit is working its way through the legal process.
“We don’t like having to have to go to court over and over to force a recalcitrant government agency to follow the law and do its job under the Endangered Species Act," Garrity said. "But the Forest Service plans to continue to destroy bull trout habitat through deforestation, road-building, and intentional burning over vast areas. The result? The agency's actions are causing bull trout populations in Montana - one of the last refuges for these native fish - to slide inexorably into extirpation and extinction. We will not allow that to happen without a fight.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.