contact Michael Garrity, Executive Director, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, (406) 459-5936
The U.S. Forest Service pulled a timber sale yesterday after two conservation groups, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Missoula against the U.S. Forest Service and Regional Forester Tom Tidwell to stop the Gallatin National Forest’s Lonesome Wood Timber Sale which authorizes logging of old growth forests in occupied grizzly bear habitat, including some logging in an inventoried roadless area along Hebgen Lake, 10 miles northwest of West Yellowstone, Montana and just five miles west of Yellowstone National Park.
Michael Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies said, “Grizzly Bears in the Yellowstone Ecosystem were recently taken off the Endangered Species list and as soon as they were delisted the Forest Service proposed building 5 miles on new logging roads into occupied grizzly bear habitat.”
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies joined six other groups in a separate lawsuit filed in 2008 to reverse the delisting of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem. U.S. Federal Judge Donald Molloy ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to put the grizzly bear back on the endangered species list this fall.
Garrity said, “The Lonesome Wood timber sale would have logged old growth forests in an inventorieds roadless area and in prime grizzly bear habitat. The logging roads would have destroyed critical grizzly bear.”
Garrity said, “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expected that roads would be removed from this area when they took grizzly bears off the endangered species list. Instead the Forest Service wanted to build more logging roads in grizzly bear habitat and roads are recognized as the primary factor that leads to grizzly bear deaths because roads allow poachers easier access to grizzly bears.”
Dr. Sara Johnson, a former wildlife biologist for the Gallatin National Forest and Director of Native Ecosystems Council said, “The Forest Service completely ignored the only peer-reviewed scientific report on goshawk viability in the Greater Yellowstone Area.
This report found declining populations of goshawks in the area, and speculated that the declines may have been caused by the logging of older forests.”
Johnson concluded, “The Lonesome Wood Project focused on logging mature forest and large old trees, including commercial logging of over 400 acres of designated old growth forest. The Forest Service completely failed to address whether it was reasonable to eliminate this habitat for old growth-dependent wildlife species in light of the documented population decline of its own old growth indicator species, the goshawk.”
