The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council and Council on Wildlife and Fish filed a lawsuit in federal court in Montana against a road-building and commercial logging project on public lands in the Big Belt Mountains of Montana.
The challenged Wood Duck project is located in a wildlife corridor that is critical for the recovery of grizzly bears, and for elk. Logging and road building harm elk and grizzly bears and will likely displace both species from the public lands in the area.
The lawsuit raises challenges against the project, and also against the Forest Service’s failure to implement strong protections for public land elk habitat, grizzly bear travel corridors, and old growth forest across the Helena – Lewis and Clark National Forest.
This area is a key travel corridor for grizzly bears to provide critical genetic exchange between the Yellowstone and Glacier National Park grizzlies to avoid inbreeding. Additionally, the area is already experiencing an exodus of native elk herds fleeing the heavily-logged and roaded National Forest lands for refuge on private ranch lands, much to the chagrin of hunters seeking elk on public lands, as well as private land ranchers.
While the Forest Service has masked its commercial logging agenda in recent years behind the claim that extensive logging and road-building on public lands are necessary for wildfire prevention, that is not the case here. The agency admits that “Wood Duck is not a fuels reduction project,” “there is no wildfire risk reduction component of the project purpose and need,” and “the Wood Duck project area does not overlap with wildland urban interface.”
One of the primary problems in this project area is the fact that 90-95% of elk in this hunting district are displaced during hunting season from public lands with high road densities onto private land where no public hunting is allowed, according to data collected by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. Yet the Forest Service failed to disclose this critical data from the State in the Project environmental assessment. And when the State proposed closing a number of roads to improve the situation for elk habitat and elk hunters, the Forest Service refused to even consider the State’s proposals in the Project environmental assessment.
Another concern is the old growth logging authorized by the Project. Old-growth-dependent wildlife species are a rare terrestrial community in Montana. Interior forest mammals, raptors, woodpeckers and songbirds need a certain level of closed canopy forest for cover as well as large dead trees for nesting or denning. This type of forest can take hundreds of years to grow and is highly desired by commercial logging interests due to the economic value of large trees.
The law requires widely-distributed and connected old growth throughout the National Forest, and throughout each Geographic Area in the National Forest. Yet the Forest Service refused to provide any map of existing old growth at these scales. Thus, the public is left to wonder how much old growth is left, and whether these rare, old-growth-dependent forest species will go extinct from a failure to preserve an adequate amount of their habitat.
The government has to follow the law just like anyone else. Now more than ever — when the government breaks the law, it is our obligation to stand up and stand in the way.
