MONTANA – A federal judge halted a large logging project near Yellowstone National Park because he said the United States Forest Service submitted plans that made it impossible to judge how it would affect critical grizzly bear habitat.
The 16,500-acre project located in the Custer Gallatin National Forest would have allowed the U.S. Forest Service to select timber and build roads for logging, but without offering specifics, only pledging that its plans would consider the total distance of the roads and not exceed certain parameters in acreage size, designed to protect critical bear habitat.
However, Judge Donald W. Molloy said that the plans amounted to giving the Forest Service permission and trusting that it would be compliant later. He also said in a 46-page ruling released Thursday that the plans also made it difficult to judge how the logging project would impact grizzly habitat, and that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said a female grizzly’s minimum range was 10 acres, while not basing that decision on any cited science.
Meanwhile the groups that challenged the logging project, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Wild Earth Guardians and the Western Environmental Law Center, pointed to other research that indicated as many as 2,500 acres were needed.
Molloy also vacated the Forest Service’s project because it failed to comply with several different portions of federal law, including the National Forest Management Act.
“(The groups) argue that this approach conflates a promise of future statutory compliance with actual compliance. (They) insist that it is impossible to assess the true environmental impacts of the project under the National Environmental Policy Act, or determine whether it meets statutory or forest plan protections for grizzly bears and lynx under the Endangered Species Act and the NFMA,” Molloy said.
The judge agreed the Forest Service failed to properly consider the impacts of the logging project on the grizzly bears. While the Forest Service, in its plans, said that it would be approving 56.8 miles of temporary roads associated with the project, it said those would be determined during the project, based on other conditions.
However, the groups had argued one of the biggest factors in grizzly bear habitats is their proximity to roads. Grizzly bears, according to the scientific testimony presented in the case, tend to avoid and settle in habitats far away from roads, and that humans are the largest threat to grizzly bear survival.
In the lawsuit, the groups argued it wasn’t just the total number or length of the roads that mattered, but also the placement. Because the Forest Service plans gave no specifics on the location of the roads, Molloy said it was impossible to judge the impacts on the bears.
“Essentially while the Forest Service’s math check out, it is unclear how the Forest Service can calculate the amount of secure habitat that will be lost without first determining where the temporary roads will be routed,” Molloy said in his ruling.
Furthermore, the judge agreed that approving the project would have meant the true extent of the project could not be calculated until after the project, leaving the groups with few legal remedies.
“Here, however in the context of grizzly bear secure habitation, the lack of specific road mapping prevents such informed decision making,” Molloy said. “The Forest Service avowing that future activities will comply with NFMA falls far short of showing that those actives do so.”
The court also said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relied on using a grizzly 10-acre patch size for habitat was consistent, but officials provided no science or basis for that size, while the groups cited other scientific research that calls for much more, and highlights the importance of that land in relation to roads for motorized vehicles.
“The U.S. Forest Service identify no specific explanation of why 10 acres, as opposed to 1 acre, 5 acres or 50 acres is an appropriate metric,” Molloy said.
The conservation groups cheered the ruling.
“This ruling makes it clear that agencies can’t just rubber-stamp massive logging projects and promise to sort out the details later,” said Kristine Akland, Northern Rockies director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The court saw right through the Forest Service’s vague plans and determined that moving targets aren’t good enough, especially when threatened animals and treasured public lands are at stake.”
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