Conservation advocates sue to stop another massive clearcutting project west of Whitefish | Mike Garrity

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, Council on Wildlife and Fish and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection filed suit on July 28 in Federal District Court in Missoula challenging the Cyclone Bill Logging Project, which is about 13 miles west of Whitefish, in the Flathead National Forest.

We are taking the Flathead National Forest to court over this project because the agency is violating its own Forest Plan rules for protecting old growth forest and grizzly connectivity requirements. The surest way to keep grizzly bears from recovering is allowing the Forest Service to continue their massive deforestation of the West.

Over the last decade, the Tally Lake Ranger District has run roughshod over the old growth forests and wildlife habitat west of Whitefish, authorizing project-after-project without ever considering the overall impact of their logging and roadbuilding apparatus. They have ignored how their litany of projects deters grizzly bears from connecting between recovery zones. They have ignored how logging is contributing to a mass die-off of species dependent on old growth forests, and how it is ruining lynx critical habitat. This death by a thousand cuts must stop.

The Cyclone Bill Project authorizes logging and burning on 12,331 acres, including 9,192 acres — 14.3 square miles — of commercial logging and clearcutting. It also includes bulldozing 13.4 miles of logging roads in the already heavily roaded area which is federally designated critical habitat for Canada lynx and secure habitat for grizzly bears.

Here are the problems with the project.

1) The Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Opinion violates the Endangered Species Act by failing to adequately analyze cumulative effects from logging on state and private lands on grizzly bears.

2) The project violates the National Environmental Policy Act and the Forest Plan by failing to take a hard look at connectivity to grizzly bears and demonstrate consistency with the Forest Plan’s connectivity guidelines.

The agency’s own Forest Plan addresses the importance of secure connectivity, stating: ‘The demographic connectivity area provides habitat that can be used by female grizzly bears and allows for bear movement between grizzly bear ecosystems. there’s no way around it, clearcuts and bulldozing logging roads destroy grizzly habitat.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says there is one population of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states. Yet, to recover grizzly bears, the separate populations of grizzlies must be able to travel through safe and connected corridors for genetic interchange to avoid inbreeding. Which is why it makes no sense since this project calls for massive clearcuts and miles of new logging roads in a designated grizzly corridor in the Flathead Forest Plan.

Thom Bridge, Independent Record

Mike Garrity

3) The Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act because they failed to analyze the impacts of the Cyclone Bill Project and Round Star Project together, even though they are right next to each other.

4) The project violates the agency’s own Forest Plan requirement to protect old growth forests.

5) The Cyclone Bill Project fails to take a hard look at impacts to old growth-dependent wildlife in violation of the national Environmental Policy Act.

6) The Forest Service’s refusal to analyze the Cyclone Bill Project in a full Environmental Impact Statement violates the National Environmental Policy Act.

The Forest Service has broken the law over and over in the past. It’s even worse now under the Trump administration. Maybe they thought we would cower in fear but we are not, and we will not. The American people are expected to follow the law and will continue to fight to ensure the federal government does, too.

This article originally ran on missoulian.com.