contact
Michael Garrity, Executive Director, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, (406) 459-5936
Arlene Montgomery, Friends of the Wild Swan, (406) 886-2011
Three conservation groups, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit on May 29th, 2012 in Federal District Court in Missoula against the U.S. Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the Flathead National Forest’s Pre-Commercial Thinning Project. The Project authorizes logging of 3,650 acres across the Flathead National Forest in areas occupied by the threatened grizzly bear, bull trout, Canada lynx and critical habitat for lynx and bull trout, and along the North Fork of the Flathead River, a Congressionally designated Wild and Scenic River corridor. The logging project was also approved as a categorical exclusion, preventing further analysis of its environmental impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Michael Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies said, “The Flathead National Forest is moving ahead with this large logging project in lynx and bull trout critical habitat without analyzing and disclosing the ecological impacts to the public.”
“The public notice was vague and did not provide adequate information on the effects of this project,” said Arlene Montgomery, Program Director for Friends of the Wild Swan. “It did not provide accurate maps or a description of where the 3,650 treatment acres were located.”
“I reviewed the project file that was supposed to contain the analysis for wildlife, fish, vegetation, soils, and other resources. What I found were discrepancies between and within the Forest Service team’s reports. For example, the bull trout analysis did not identify where treatments will occur in relation to bull trout critical habitat and it put the site-specific analysis off to a later time. But with a categorical exclusion there will be no later time for analysis. There appears to be extensive thinning planned for Big Creek, which is bull trout critical habitat, yet there was no analysis,” Montgomery continued.
“The Forest Service is attempting to deregulate logging from Congressional oversight and public participation. This is public land and the Forest Service needs to release an Environmental analysis that discloses to the public how this project will affect our National Forest and the fish and wildlife habitat the forest supports,” Garrity continued.
“Based on the lack of information and analysis as well as other issues we raised in our comments, we do not believe that this project qualifies for a categorical exclusion. Extraordinary circumstances exist and the Flathead failed to take a hard look at the cumulative effects to sensitive, threatened and endangered species and other forest resources,” Montgomery added.
Garrity concluded, “Congress requires the Forest Service to do three things when they plan massive timber sales, give the public an opportunity to participate in the decision, disclose to the public the potential impacts of the logging, and give the public different alternatives to accomplish the purpose and need of the timber sale. The Flathead National Forest did none of these. We told the Forest Service this and unfortunately they didn’t listen which gave us no choice but to ask the Federal District Court to force the federal government to follow the law like the American people have to do.”
