Kootenai National Forest drops appeal of decision blocking logging in grizzly habitat
By Tristan Scott, the Missoulian, March 22, 2011 [here]
Kalispell, Montana - Forest Service officials have withdrawn their appeal of a federal judge’s decision halting several logging projects that threatened grizzly bear habitat in the Kootenai National Forest.
U.S. District Judge Don Molloy blocked the projects last June in a lawsuit between the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Kootenai Forest Supervisor Paul Bradford. In his 64-page ruling, Molloy said the Forest Service was unable to show it had properly assessed how the projects would affect the dwindling population of grizzly bears.
Bradford appealed the ruling to the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals, but attorneys with the Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted a request to dismiss the appeal Friday. The appellate court granted the request Monday.
Speaking by telephone from his office in Helena, Michael Garrity, executive director of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said he was pleased with the decision and hopes it will encourage more thorough environmental assessments of future logging proposals and their effect on wildlife species.
“We feel that Judge Molloy’s ruling was very strong and we hope the Forest Service complies with his order and designs timber sales in the future that don’t violate the Endangered Species Act,” Garrity said.
Kootenai Forest spokesman Willie Sykes said the office had no information about the motion or the appellate court’s ruling, and did not return calls for comment after being provided with the documents.
If they had been allowed to proceed, the three projects would have affected about 4,000 acres in the mountains of Lincoln County. Besides creating 14 miles of new roads, the logging proposals would have reopened and reconstructed approximately 10 additional miles of closed roads.
“The Forest Service knows most grizzly bears are killed because of encounters with humans near roads,” Garrity said in a news release announcing the decision. “But the agency nonetheless wanted to build 14 miles of new logging roads for these projects. Besides costing taxpayers millions of dollars, these roads would have definitely threatened extinction of the isolated Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear population.”
The Little Beaver project would have allowed commercial thinning on 780 acres, along with construction of 5.5 miles of new permanent roads and 2 miles of temporary road. The Grizzly project involved timber harvest, prescribed burning and thinning, and habitat restoration on 2,360 acres. The Miller West Fisher project would have permitted timber harvest on 2,506 acres, with road storage and removal and other restoration work on 3,148 acres. … [more]