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BLM plan hurting lynx, grizzly bears, old trees, new lawsuit alleges • Daily Montanan [1]

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Date: 2024-12-03

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has used arbitrary definitions of “lynx habitat” and the “wildland urban interface” to approve a logging project in the Garnet Mountain Range in a way that will hurt the wildcats, a new lawsuit alleges.

The project, called the Clark Fork Face Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project, also will harm grizzly bears, wolverines, elk, bull trout and old trees, the complaint said. According to the lawsuit, the project would take place roughly 50 miles east of Missoula on more than 70% of BLM-owned lands in the project area.

Approved in April 2024, the project authorizes logging on 8,283 acres (almost 13 square miles), burning on another 4,600 acres, and logging, thinning and burning on 2,146 acres, according to the lawsuit.

“The project would remove four million board feet of timber every year over the project’s 10 to 15-year lifespan,” the lawsuit said.

But it said the project doesn’t meaningfully consider the effects that “cutting down thousands of acres of mature trees” will have on carbon storage and sequestration either.

“Nor does the EA (environmental assessment) discuss or attempt to quantify in its brief analysis the immediate impacts of logging-related greenhouse gas emissions from operating large machinery, reconstructing roads, or hauling cut timber on trucks, trains, and ocean liners powered by fossil fuels,” the lawsuit said.

Filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Missoula, the lawsuit alleges the BLM and its local, state and federal director are violating the National Environmental Policy Act and Federal Land Policy and Management Act in approving the “major logging project” between Bonner and Drummond.

Led by the Center for Biological Diversity, a group of conservation nonprofits filed the complaint. Other plaintiffs are the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, the Native Ecosystems Council, the Council on Wildlife and Fish, and the Yellowstone to Uintas Connection.

The BLM’s Montana/Dakotas State Office could not be reached Tuesday afternoon by voicemail for comment.

The conservation groups are asking a judge to find the plan violates the law, to vacate the decision to approve it and to stop its implementation. They also want the court to require the BLM to address alleged deficiencies in lynx habitat mapping.

“As of the date of this filing, to the best of plaintiffs’ knowledge, the BLM has not yet advertised a sale under this project,” the lawsuit said. “However, the project does authorize winter logging.”

The lawsuit alleges numerous problems with the logging project, including ones related to roads, and it also alleges the BLM is misapplying terms to defend its approval of the work.

For example, it said about 70% of the project is considered to be in the wildland urban interface, or WUI, and 5,064 of those acres occur on BLM lands, or 24%.

But the lawsuit said the project approves logging on a lot more acreage; it said the environmental assessment defines that interface as all subdivisions and structures in the project area, plus a one-mile buffer.

“In other words, the project’s ‘functional WUI’ greatly expands the scope of the WUI … for the (plan), and it effectively allows the BLM to log all BLM lands within the planning area — including Canada lynx habitat occurring within federally designated lynx critical habitat that had previously been protected,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit outlined a litany of alleged problems related to roads, including that they will harm protected animals. The complaint also alleges the BLM proposed a plan that uses 19 miles of roads that supposedly already exist, but are in reality “impassable.”

It said “impassable” means the road is actually blocked by natural vegetation, fallen trees, boulders, or other things. The lawsuit included a couple of photos of “future haul roads” the groups said currently exist in the system, and they look more like wide trails than roads.

The lawsuit also said the environmental assessment, or EA, identified 18 nearby projects on 4,986 acres. It said the BLM expects the work will disturb the animals, but the document doesn’t offer details about it, such as timelines, scale, or proximity of the activities to any types of habitats.

“There is no analysis in the EA about how nearby projects … may affect wildlife, connectivity or security,” the lawsuit said. “Rather, potential impacts to wildlife … are dismissed as insignificant because the BLM falsely assumes that wildlife can easily move away from project-related disturbances into other suitable habitat without ever disclosing where this other suitable habitat may be.”

Additionally, the complaint said the EA omits mention of a major nearby logging project expected to take place over the course of eight years through 2031, called the Coyote Greenough Projects. But it said the EA for the Coyote project said the BLM was consulted.

It also alleges the BLM falls short in describing or mapping wildlife corridors when it comes to lynx. It said the entire project is “entirely within lynx critical habitat,” but the BLM “deemed more than 16,000 acres ‘currently’ unsuitable for lynx, allowing those acres to be logged without any lynx conservation measures.

The complaint said the project fails to consider the negative effects of road work on grizzly bears too, even though the environmental assessment acknowledges the area is “a critical ‘stepping stone’ for grizzlies traveling between the (Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem) and Greater Yellowstone and Bitterroot ecosystems.”

Wolverines will be in trouble as well if the project moves forward, the lawsuit said.

It said more wolverines have been documented in the area in the last decade, but more roads will mean more snowmobilers, for one thing, and the BLM wrongly concludes the project’s effects on the protected species are expected to be “insignificant.”

Spokespeople for the conservation groups said the BLM needs to do better.

“The Clark Fork Face Project is yet another inexcusable example of the Bureau of Land Management prioritizing industrial logging over science-backed conservation,” said attorney Kristine Akland, Northern Rockies director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “After decades of industrial exploitation, this region is just beginning to heal, with grizzly bears and other wildlife starting to return. Instead of encouraging restoration, the BLM is charging ahead with another logging project that will obliterate any chance these embattled species have at making a true recovery.”

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2024/12/03/blm-plan-hurting-lynx-grizzly-bears-old-trees-new-lawsuit-alleges/

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