Volume 15, Number 3
Fall 2003

On June 27, 2003 US District Court Judge Donald Molloy declared illegal several timber sales involving over 18,000 acres of logging on the Kootenai National Forest in the northwest corner of Montana. Ruling in favor of the Ecology Center of Missoula and the Lands Council of Spokane, Washington, the judge noted "the Forest Service is out of compliance with the Forest Plan in the amount of old-growth across the forest and in monitoring requirements."

Standing on the boundary between a clearcut and an old-growth stand on Virginia Hill near Eureka, Montana on the Kootenai National Forest.

This is an important ruling because it recognizes the ecological necessity for Forest Service to maintain high quality habitat for increasingly rare species across the landscape?not just in wilderness or roadless areas. Old-growth forests generally include old, live trees, large snags, large downed logs, and multiple canopy layers. Forest area with these structures provide habitat necessary for wildlife species such as the Canada lynx, northern goshawk, pileated woodpecker, fisher, and great gray owl. When native forests are converted to plantations of young trees by clearcut or similar logging techniques, the old-growth character is eliminated in the logged areas. Even partial cutting or so-called "salvage" logging lowers the habitat value relative to unmanaged forests. Most of the wild, unmanaged, forests in the Wild Rockies bioregion have been either logged or fragmented into smaller and smaller patches, causing a reduction in biological diversity of the forests as a whole. Those still remaining have increased value for maintaining biological diversity. Along with the acres of roadless and wilderness, the amount of intact old-growth forests provides a measure of the remaining biological diversity in our bioregion.

When the Forest Service adopted the Kootenai Forest Plan in 1987, they promised to protect at least 10% of the forest in old-growth condition, well-distributed across the Kootenai. As a safeguard to ensure that this approach would work, the Kootenai also committed to tracking the population levels of those species that rely on old-growth forest. The Kootenai National Forest has not kept these promises. According to the District Court?s ruling, "It is not clear ? that the Forest Service knows enough about native wildlife species to assure viability of old-growth dependent species."

Some of the enjoined timber sales logged areas affected by fires that burned in the Kootenai in 2000. The Forest Service claimed that the areas to be logged post-fire were little but fuel build-ups for subsequent fires, ignoring scientific evidence that in many places the fires actually enhanced the habitat value for old-growth wildlife species.

In part because it is the most heavily logged national forest in Montana, this year the Kootenai National Forest was named as one of America?s Ten Most Endangered Forests. That story, along with maps and details of the Ecology Center?s work that raised serious doubt about the accuracy of the Kootenai?s old-growth inventory, can be found at: http://www.wildrockies.org/teci/kootenai