PRESS RELEASE - June 30, 2010

CONTACT: Michael Garrity, Executive Director, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, 406 459-5936
Liz Sedler, Alliance for the Wild Rockies (208) 263-5281

Federal Court upholds Alliance for the Wild Rockies challenge and halts illegal road-building and logging in NW Montana Grizzly Bear Habitat

A federal district court in Montana overwhelmingly upheld contentions by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies that three planned road-building and logging projects in occupied grizzly bear habitat violate the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

The court halted implementation of the illegal federal projects and ordered the US Forest Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service to complete further environmental analysis and change the project designs to comply with federal laws before the projects will be allowed to proceed.

"There are very few grizzly bears left in the Kootenai National Forest," said Michael Garrity, the Executive Director of the Alliance and a former natural resource economics instructor at the University of Utah. "The Forest Service knows most grizzly bears are killed because of encounters with humans near roads, but the agency nonetheless wants to build 14 miles of new logging roads for these projects. Besides costing taxpayers millions of dollars, these roads definitely threaten extinction of the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear population."

The dwindling population of the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bears inhabits remote mountainous regions in Northwestern Montana and Northern Idaho and, according the US Fish & Wildlife Service, are almost certainly going extinct. "The agency is ignoring its own science," added Liz Sedler, a long-time grizzly bear advocate for the Alliance. "The small population of only 45 bears is less than half of the minimum of 100 bears needed ensure a genetically-stable population. That fails to meet the federal government's own recovery goal and these projects would only have accelerated the loss of this population of grizzlies."

Besides the 14 miles of new roads, the three logging proposals would have allowed re-opening of 8.5 miles of closed roads and reconstruction of 2.4 miles roads to facilitate almost 4,000 acres of commercial logging in habitat currently occupied by the threatened grizzly bears.

"This is a relatively small area and losing that much habitat to road-building and logging activities would definitely displace the bears from thousands of acres," Garrity said. "The federal government's own data show the grizzlies need more secure habitat, not less, or this population of bears is going to vanish. We would just as soon see the federal government follow the law and its own science, but since the Forest Service chose not to, we were left with little option but to challenge these timber sales."

"Sure, it would be easier to plan and conduct timber sales if there were no grizzly bears in the Cabinet-Yaak," explained Sedler, "but the law doesn't allow the agencies to give timber sales priority over the conservation and restoration of endangered species. Grizzlies have been there for tens of thousands of years. The Forest Service's aggressive timber extraction program over the last 40 years has brought them to the brink of extinction."

The three federal logging projects successfully challenged by the Alliance are the Grizzly Vegetation and Transportation Management Project, the Miller West Fisher Project and the Little Beaver Hazardous Fuels Reduction Project — all located on the Kootenai National Forest in Montana. In addition to challenging the Forest Service's approval of these proposals, the lawsuit also challenged the US Fish & Wildlife Service's conclusion that the proposed logging and road-building would not harm the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bears.

"We won on six major points in this suit," said Garrity, "including the need to discuss flaws in past studies in the project-level National Environmental Policy documents. As we contended, and the court agreed, both the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service have some work to do to get their act together in the future."

Court ruling and complaint attached.

Summary of the Federal District Court Order upholding AWR's claims:

1. ESA § 9 claim that agencies need an incidental take statement for take of grizzly bears outside of Recovery Zone;
2. ESA § 7 claim that "not likely to adversely affect" is arbitrary because projects cause unpermitted take outside the Recovery Zone;
3. ESA § 7 claim that "not likely to adversely affect" is arbitrary because helicopter logging adversely affects bears;
4. NFMA claim that Forest Service failed to demonstrate compliance with the Forest Plan compatible use standard;
5. NEPA claim that the Forest Service cannot limit its cumulative effects analysis just to the BMU that the timber sale falls within; and
6. NEPA claim that the Forest Service needs to discuss the flaws in the Wakkinen study in the project-level NEPA documents.