Conservation Advocates Sue Flathead Forest Service to Stop Massive Clearcutting West of Whitefish, Montana

If anyone wonders why we’re taking the Forest Service to court over the Round Star logging project, there is one primary reason: lynx critical habitat is the worst place for clearcuts. The surest way to drive lynx to extinction is allowing the Forest Service to continue their massive deforestation of the West.

This ill-conceived project authorizes logging on 9,151 acres (more than 14 square miles), with 6,324 acres of commercial logging and clearcutting, and bulldozing almost 30 miles of new roads and trails. The logging project is not only in lynx critical habitat, but also in grizzly bear secure core habitat and elk winter range. It is a vital linkage area that provides habitat connectivity for a wide range of wildlife species moving between the Whitefish and Salish mountain ranges.

Four conservation groups, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Council on Wildlife and Fish, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, and Native Ecosystems Council, filed suit on January 8th in Federal District Court in Missoula challenging the project, which sits 13 miles west of Whitefish, Montana, in the Flathead National Forest. 

The Forest Service’s so-called “conservation strategy” for lynx prioritizes clearcutting over protecting lynx. This is directly contrary to the Endangered Species Act, which requires the Forest Service to maintain and recover lynx populations, not destroy the naturally thick forests that they—and their primary prey of snowshoe hares—require to survive. Yet the agency does no monitoring, so the ongoing decline of lynx isn’t even being tracked as the agency continues to clearcut our National Forests.

Our lawsuit charges the Forest Service with four different legal violations.

First, the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take the legally required “hard look” at the impacts to wildlife and habitat connectivity from the Round Star logging project and multiple other nearby and adjoining logging projects. 

Cumulatively, these projects total almost 42,000 acres of logging and burning and 100 miles of new road building in close proximity to the Round Star Project area. Yet, the impacts of these projects were not even mentioned in the Environmental Assessment.

The cumulative effects of new roads, trails, and large clearcuts on lynx, grizzly bears, elk, and wolverine from the enormous amount of Forest Service logging in the Tally Lake Ranger District were not analyzed. Which makes no sense since we won a court decision stopping the Ripley logging project in the Kootenai National Forest on this same issue last year.

Second, the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act by using an illegally-broadened definition of the Wildland Urban Interface that’s contrary to the plain language of the law.

Once again, this is an issue the Alliance already won in a Ninth Circuit decision against a Forest Service project in Idaho—and a majority of the judges on that panel were appointed by President Trump.

Third, the Forest Service violated the National Forest Management Act by failing to demonstrate compliance with the Forest Plan’s wildlife and vegetation standards designed to maintain habitat connectivity and mitigate adverse effects from logging and road building in occupied lynx habitat, grizzly bear secure core habitat, and elk winter range.

And finally, the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a hard look at the effects of logging and clearcutting over 9,000 acres of forests on climate change. 

This is another tragic example of the Forest Service wasting taxpayers’ money defending illegal projects, as the agency lost on the climate issue defending the Black Ram logging project in the Yaak valley in northwest Montana. Even grade school children know that trees absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. But apparently the Forest Service is willing to ignore that fact to get out the cut for the timber industry. 

Perhaps the Forest Service thinks it can do the same thing—breaking the law—over and over and expect a different result. But that’s the definition of insanity and seeing the Biden Forest Service try to get around the law again is insane. Maybe they thought true conservation advocates would go away, but we are not going anywhere. We live by the law and will continue to ensure that the Forest Service does too. 

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