Conservationists Win Another Battle in the Fight for Bitterroot Grizzly Bears
Grizzly sow and cub. Photo: Frank van Mane/USGS.
On March 31, two Montana grassroots conservation groups, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council, prevailed in their lawsuit to stop a logging and road-building project on public lands in the Sapphire Mountains of the Bitterroot Valley because the government had pretended that grizzly bears were not present in that region. The facts show otherwise — grizzly bears are repeatedly attempting to repopulate the Bitterroot Valley on both the east and west sides. The court order requires that the government acknowledge the growing presence of grizzly bears in the Bitterroot Valley and act appropriately to protect them.
This victory follows the groups’ recent victory mandating that the government prepare a new environmental analysis on Bitterroot grizzly bear recovery. “These cases are two sides of the same coin. On one side, we fought for and won a new analysis that will look at the big picture of Bitterroot grizzly recovery over the whole region; on the other side, we fought and prevailed against a specific project that is trying to move forward as if Bitterroot grizzly bears don’t exist. We will continue to protect these Bitterroot grizzly bears at both the regional scale, and the site-specific project scale.
The project stopped by the most recent lawsuit was called the Gold Butterfly Project, and proposed bulldozing in 6.4 miles of new roads, adding 16.5 miles of illegal, non-system roads, and decommissioning 5.8 miles of system roads, for a net increase of 17.1 miles of permanent system roads. The project also proposed private, for-profit commercial logging and clearcutting on 5,281 acres or 8.25 square miles of National Forest public lands, including logging 567 acres of old growth forests, and non-commercial logging and burning on an additional 2,084 acres or 3.25 square miles.
Most grizzlies are killed within 1/3 mile of a road. So this is great news for Bitterroot grizzly bears since they would be at incredible risk if the Forest Service was allowed to bulldoze even more roads into the project area.
The court ruled that the Forest Service violated federal law when it told the public that there weren’t grizzlies in the Sapphire mountains. Keeping grizzlies safe in the Bitterroot region is the lynchpin to recovery of grizzlies in the lower 48 states. This critical area connects the grizzly population in the Greater Yellowstone region with the grizzly bear populations in the Northern Continental Divide, Cabinet-Yaak, and Selkirk regions, thus providing genetic diversity to preclude irreversible inbreeding.
This is a win for Bitterroot grizzlies and the entire grizzly bear population in the Northern Rockies Ecosystem. We will continue to fight to ensure the recovery of these bears. We not only have to fight to recover grizzly bears, we also need to fight to recover the ecosystems upon which they depend. It is not easy or cheap to beat the most powerful government in the world and one that has unlimited resources. Because we are a very small group, anything you can donate to us to help us pay for this fight will help immensely. Please also consider donating to Counterpunch so they can continue to spread the word on what our government is doing.
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