Using the fear of wildfires, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are spending billions of taxpayer dollars to intentionally burn millions of acres of National Forests and BLM lands. Their plans are to continue to do so for the next 20-30 years.

The smoke from burning mostly green and often wet trees and brush heavily and frequently fills Western valleys, impacting sizable populations in nearby cities and towns and is particularly dangerous for those with existing respiratory illnesses.

Using dubious loopholes such as “categorical exclusions,” which allows agencies to skip environmental analysis such as the human impacts from breathing smoke for hours or days, they completely ignore the grim reality that baby birds die from the smoke.

Yet the government provides no estimates whatsoever of how many birds will die, including goshawks, the largest and most scarce of forest raptors.

Birds are even more sensitive to air pollution than are humans.  Wildfire smoke can directly kill birds or reduce their fitness due to smoke toxicity. According to Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot, birds’ respiratory systems are incredibly efficient at producing the oxygen required to fly.  But they are also more vulnerable to the effects of smoke due to their higher metabolism and oxygen extraction combined with a lack of mechanisms to clear particles from their airways. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a common cause of death in birds exposed to smoke, and other compounds in smoke can cause respiratory issues like pneumonia.

Slashing and burning forests, aspen stands, pinyon-juniper woodlands and sagebrush with fires occurs year-round in the southwest and every season except the winter in the north. But despite burning millions of acres, these agencies refuse to consider how burning up so much wildlife habitat will affect the wildlife they’re supposed to be maintaining and recovering.

A prime example is burning sagebrush, which both kills sage grouse and destroys their habitat. There were 16 million Greater Sage Grouse before Europeans arrived and began the destruction of the “sagebrush sea” of the Great Plains. The iconic birds were down to 400,000 in 2015 when Obama’s Secretary of Interior, Sally Jewell, rejected listing them for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Today there are only 200,000 left — an astounding loss of half the remaining birds in a decade.

Even though pinyon jays have lost 85% of their population in the last 50 years, the Forest Service  and the BLM want to log, masticate and burn millions of acres of their pinyon-juniper woodland habitat. This despite the fact that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently issued a decision that the pinyon jays may be warranted to be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — mainly because of loss of habitat.

The problem with intentionally burning an area to prevent a wildfire is the odds of a wildfire burning in these areas is less than 1%. Forests in the western U.S. have evolved with high intensity wildfires for thousands of years and wildfire scientists say the government should focus on helping people protect their homes from wildfire by using non-flammable building materials, clearing nearby vegetation and trimming low branches from trees up to 100 feet out from a home.

Not only are birds rapidly vanishing from North America, but humans also need clean air. Simply put, government agencies burning millions of acres of public lands throughout the year is continually poisoning the air in much of the West.

Please join us in opposing plans to burn our public lands, polluting our clean air, and killing millions of the already-declining birds that live there.  Please also consider donating to Counterpunch for the Spring Fundraiser.

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The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection filed a federal lawsuit this month to stop a proposed pipeline corridor that would cut through six roadless areas in a National Forest in Idaho. The area is habitat for imperiled species like the greater sage grouse, grizzly bears, lynx, and wolverine, and the pipeline would result in a permanent 20-mile road across otherwise roadless public lands.  The new permanent pipeline corridor could be used for additional pipelines in the future, and will undoubtedly increase illegal ATV use in the region.

The Forest Service authorized a special use permit in March to clear-cut a 50-foot wide, 18.2-mile-long corridor through six National Forest Inventoried Roadless Areas for construction of a private company’s pipeline from Montpelier, Idaho to Afton, Wyoming. The decision allows a 50-foot right-of-way that will be clearcut during construction, and a permanent 20-foot right-of-way to maintain the pipeline. In addition to the pipeline itself and the utility corridor, there will also be above-ground facilitiessuch as valves and staging areas.  But since the project violates a number of federal laws, the Alliance and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection have filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service to stop construction of the pipeline.

This pipeline would create a road through designated roadless areas, further fragments security habitat for deer and elk, and further degrades already impacted habitat for the threatened Canada lynx.

This is the second time the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Yellowstone to Uintas have sued to stop this pipeline. We filed our first lawsuit in April of 2020 and two years later the Forest Service tucked its tail and ran, pulling their decision without even waiting for a final court order. But now they’re trying again, and the simple truth is that the pipeline corridor will actually be a permanent road through National Forest lands despite the fact that these public lands have been classified and protected as federal Inventoried Roadless Areas.

That means motorized vehicles will be allowed to permanently use this corridor to maintain and inspect the pipeline. Which will cause permanent vegetation removal, increased sight-lines for poaching, increased noxious weed introductions, and abundant new opportunities for illegal motor vehicle use in these currently roadless areas.

The basis for our lawsuit is that the Forest Service failed to disclose and demonstrate compliance with its own Forest Plan requirements for sage grouse. The agency also failed to analyze the cumulative effects on sage grouse as required.

In this case, the Forest Service also failed to demonstrate that the new pipeline corridor is in the public interest; is compatible and consistent with other Forest resources; that there is no reasonable alternative or accommodation on National Forest lands; that it is impractical to use existing right-of-ways; and that the rationale for approving the new pipeline corridor is not solely to lower costs for the energy company. This violates the Forest Plan, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Forest Service Manual, the National Forest Management Act, the Mineral Leasing Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act.  National Forests were designated for the benefit of all Americans, not to maximize the profits of the oil and gas industry. Instead of needlessly destroying this rare habitat for endangered species on publicly-owned lands, the private company should use existing right-of-ways or private lands.

We will never stop fighting to protect our wild public lands but we need your help. Please donate today so we can keep fighting.

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It took the Alliance for the Wild Rockies almost six years of litigation fighting the US Forest Service through both the Trump and Biden administrations to try and save what’s left of the imperiled grizzly bear population in Northern Idaho’s Selkirk Ecosystem. But that persistence, along with strong and consistent local opposition to the project, paid off when a federal court recently issued a decision upholding the Alliance’s claims and halted the “Hanna Flats” project with an injunction.

There’s no other way to put it, the Selkirk grizzly bear population is in dire straits. There are only about 50 bears in the population when the very minimum needed for recovery is 100 bears.

Why is the population so low? Because the bears suffer from human-caused mortality at a rate of about 2.7 bears killed by humans per year and grizzlies have very low reproductive rates since females become sexually mature at 4.5 years and only breed every 3-4 years and cease breeding at about 10 years old.

This current mortality rate, which violates the limits set by the federal government, is so high for this tiny population that there are only three years out of the last 30 with higher mortality rates.

There is really no hope of recovery for this imperiled population unless the government starts complying with road density limits to protect grizzly bear habitat since it’s well-documented that most human-caused grizzly mortalities occur near roads.

The Court Order in this case found the project violates federal law since the government’s own management plan for the area limits road construction to protect grizzly bears. Moreover, the court found the government has been violating the road construction limit for many years, and was continuing to violate it with this project.

The Court also found that the government’s attempt to secretly change the management plan to allow more roads without the required public process for amendments to the management plan was also illegal. The Court Order found that changing and weakening the most important substantive Plan provision for grizzly bears in this area – the road limits – is a modification that requires a Plan amendment. But until such an amendment occurs, the road limits remain in effect. The Court then enjoined the project from proceeding for these violations of federal law.

This is a big win for grizzly bears, but in addition to protecting the grizzly bears, this decision also protects the rights of the homeowners in this area — who strongly opposed massive clearcutting operations that would destroy the forest around their homes and trails, and lead to harmful sedimentation of waterways. Throughout the years of litigation, they bravely stood up and spoke truth to power to protect their home. There is no doubt that their resistance and strength helped bring about this victory.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies is a grassroots conservation group that focuses on protecting rare grizzly bear populations, endangered species, and functioning forest and river ecosystems on public lands in the Northern Rocky Mountains of Idaho and Montana.

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On April 3, 2025, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Council on Wildlife and Fish and Native Ecosystems Council filed a federal lawsuit to protect habitat for three rare wildlife species — grizzly bears, lynx, and sage grouse — in Gravelly Mountains of Montana, which is an area that provides a critical wildlife corridor connecting the Yellowstone area to other mountain ranges in Montana.  The challenged government action is called the “Greenhorn” project and it allows destructive logging, road-building, and burning activities across thousands of acres of public lands in this key wildlife corridor zone  in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest..

We are deeply disappointed that the government would authorize this destructive project on our public lands considering the number of court rulings that have found similar projects illegal because such projects violate a number of federal laws designed to protect rare wildlife species.

The project area is enormous. It’s located about 10 miles south of Virginia City, Montana and calls for bulldozing in 28.7 miles of new and rebuilt logging roads to enable logging and burning over 17,000 acres or 26.5 square miles in prime wildlife habitat, much of it in inventoried roadless areas.

The government illegally eliminated 1.1 million acres of lynx habitat protections on the Beaverhead -Deerlodge National Forest in 2020, and it relies on that illegal removal to authorize logging in lynx habitat here.  Multiple federal courts have found this to be illegal, and the government knows it.

Sage grouse populations are also in very steep decline and the federal government is desperately trying to keep from having them listed under the Endangered Species Act. Consequently, destroying their habitat with clearcutting, burning, and bulldozing simply makes no sense. Nonetheless, the government never applied their own mandatory sage grouse protections to this project.

Also, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest Plan requires that 60% of the Gravellies be managed for secure grizzly habitat. Currently only 54% of the Gravellies provide secure habitat for grizzlies; the Greenhorn project would reduce grizzly secure habitat by one third. At the same time the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks is trucking grizzly bears from the Glacier ecosystem to the Yellowstone ecosystem for genetic connectivity, — why not just follow the law, protect the grizzly corridor, and let grizzlies walk there on their own? This government action just makes no sense.

This is an important corridor where grizzlies from Yellowstone could travel to breed with grizzlies from other isolated grizzly populations, and do it without trucks and for free.

What happens when the executive branch of the federal government breaks the law? The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution not only guarantees freedom of speech, it also gives citizens the right to sue the federal government for very good reasons. If someone throws a brick through a window, the police enforce the law. But when a federal executive agency breaks the law, the citizens must stand up to enforce the law.  This is how the civil justice system works and citizens should never be shamed or intimidated from using the civil justice system to hold the government accountable to the law.

We are not afraid to take federal agencies to court to make them follow the law because the Constitution is on our side. Our government does not exist to serve the for-profit interests of the billionaires.  Our government exists to protect our land, water, air, and wildlife for current and future generations.  Public lands are for the public — not private profit — and we will continue to stand up for this principle despite the name-calling and threats we are always subjected to by politicians and special interests.   This is our home and we will protect it.  Their money and scare tactics will not stop us.

If you agree, please consider helping us and also helping Counterpunch for publishing columns like this.

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Montana’s Paradise Valley is aptly named. Sitting between two towering mountain ranges, it cradles the mighty Yellowstone River that flows from its headwaters in America’s first national park and provides critical habitat to the native species still present 200 years after Lewis and Clark’s expedition, including grizzly bears, wolves, and wolverines.

Yet, the Forest Service decided to expand cattle grazing on six federal allotments on the valley’s east side, including in grizzly bear recovery zones, It is a formula for destruction of native vegetation, sedimentation in cutthroat spawning streams, and dead wolves and bears – which is why United States Magistrate Judge Kathleen DeSoto issued her Findings and Recommendation Order in favor of the Alliance, Native Ecosystems Council, Western Watersheds Project, and six other wildlife and ecosystem protection advocacy groups on March 27th.

In addition to several of the allotments located in grizzly bear recovery zones, the agency also expanded the area and lengthened the livestock grazing season, putting the bears at increased risk of being killed in response to foreseeable conflicts with private, for-profit cattle operations. Our lawsuit also named the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a defendant because the agency is supposed to be protecting endangered and recovering species, but failed to adequately consider the impacts of the grazing decision on grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states.

The Court ruled in our favor on four out of five of our National Environmental Policy Act claims including: (1) failure to analyze the effects of putting cattle on the allotments early in the spring; (2) failure to analyze habitat connectivity, which is an important factor for grizzlies; (3) failure to analyze the cumulative effects related to activities on private lands in the area; and (4) failure to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement.

The six grazing allotments lie just north of the border of Yellowstone National Park and encompass a portion of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, within an important habitat connectivity zone. Increased grizzly bear mortality in this area on the edge of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem will not only slow grizzly bear range expansion, it will keep the Yellowstone grizzly bear population genetically isolated, leading to irreversible inbreeding.

In recent decades, grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem have experienced a drastic decline in two of their main food sources, whitebark pine nuts and Yellowstone cutthroat trout, That’s led to an increase in meat consumption by grizzly bears, including livestock that continue to be grazed in areas where conflict is virtually certain.

Providing secure travel corridors between the Yellowstone ecosystem to the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem is essential to grizzly bear recovery. The Forest Service’s decision puts private cattle on the public’s national forest one month earlier, when calves are still very small and tempting targets for hungry grizzlies after waking up from a long winter nap.

Since Montana alone has more than two million cows – compared to less than 1000 grizzlies in the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, our lawsuit and the Court’s Order ensure that grizzlies are protected and recovered as required under federal law.

We would like to thank the Western Environmental Law Center for representing us.

Please consider helping us continue to fight to truly recover grizzly bears and their habitat.

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Thanks to our threat to sue the Forest Service over using a categorical exclusion to avoid analyzing impacts on bull trout, grizzly bears, and lynx, a massive deforestation project in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley has been halted.

The Forest Service’s Eastside Project authorized 15,000-45,000 acres of tree cutting and burning per year for 20 years and the 500,000-acre project covers almost the entire east side of the Bitterroot National Forest from Stevensville to over 50 miles south in the Sapphire Mountains.

The Forest Service illegally authorized this massive project through the use of a categorical exclusion, which was intended for projects that would have no impact on the environment such as painting an outhouse or building a shed at a Ranger station.

But now the project has been halted since the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Center for Biological Diversity, Fiends of the Bitterroot and other conservation groups sent the government a 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue for violating the Endangered Species Act. We notified the Forest Service that they failed comply with the Endangered Species act in a number of ways including failing consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the project’s effect on bull trout and grizzly bears — both of which are listed as threatened species — in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Congress included the 60-day notice requirement in the citizens’ enforcement provision of the Endangered Species Act specifically to give the government that much time to correct their illegal activity before facing a lawsuit.

Normally the Forest Service responds to our 60-day notices with a letter telling us to go jump in a lake. Then we sue the agency — and have won in court over 80 percent of the time. But this time, undoubtedly realizing they were fighting a losing battle, the Forest Service agreed to halt actions to implement the tree cutting and burning until they followed the law.

It would be great to think the Forest Service has all of a sudden became a law-abiding agency, but unfortunately, they are still violating other laws with this project, including by authorizing half a million acres of tree cutting and burning without environmental review.

Despite the vast landscape the project will impact, the Forest Service did not disclose where the tree cutting and burning will occur. That’s a clear violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government — and anyone who does a project using federal money — to notify the public of what they plan to do, where they plan to do it, and how it will affect the environment.

In the case of the Eastside project, the Forest Service claims that the precise location, timing, and scope of the treatments will be decided immediately prior to implementation, but without further analysis or public input which is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The law also requires the Forest Service to take a “hard look” at potential impacts to wildlife, including wolverines which are particularly important since scientists have discovered a lactating female wolverine in the project area, and there have been multiple instances of confirmed grizzly bear presence in the Sapphire Mountains over the past year. Grizzly bears, lynx, wolverines, bull trout and bull trout critical habitat are all protected under the Endangered Species Act.

American citizens are required to follow the law every single day. It is time for the Forest Service to start following the law and quit destroying habitat for threatened and endangered species.

During the last Trump administration, our small, gritty organization, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, sued 18 times to protect our planet and we won 16 times.

Please help the Alliance for the Wild Rockies fight to make the Trump Administration’s Forest Service follow the law and help Counterpunch spread the word.

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The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council and Council on Wildlife and Fish filed a lawsuit in federal court in Montana against a road-building and commercial logging project on public lands in the Big Belt Mountains of Montana.  The challenged Wood Duck project is located in a wildlife corridor that is critical for recovery of grizzly bears, and is highly desirable elk habitat.  Logging and road building harm elk and grizzly bears and will likely displace both species from the public lands in the area.

The lawsuit raises challenges against the project, and also against the Forest Service’s failure to implement strong protections for public land elk habitat, grizzly bear travel corridors, and old growth forest across the Helena – Lewis and Clark National Forest.

This area is a key travel corridor for grizzly bears to provide critical genetic exchange between the Yellowstone and Glacier National Park grizzlies to avoid inbreeding.  Additionally, the area is already experiencing an exodus of native elk herds fleeing the heavily-logged and roaded National Forest lands for refuge on private ranch lands, much to the chagrin of hunters seeking elk on public lands, as well as private land ranchers.

While the Forest Service has masked its commercial logging agenda in recent years behind the claim that extensive logging and road-building on public lands are necessary for wildfire prevention, that is not the case here. The agency admits that “Wood Duck is not a fuels reduction project,” “there is no wildfire risk reduction component of the project purpose and need,” and “the Wood Duck project area does not overlap with wildland urban interface.”

One of the primary problems in this project area is the fact that 90-95% of elk in this hunting district are displaced during hunting season from public lands with high road densities onto private land where no public hunting is allowed, according to data collected by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.  Yet the Forest Service failed to disclose this critical data from the State in the Project environmental assessment. And when the State proposed closing a number of roads to improve the situation for elk habitat and elk hunters, the Forest Service refused to even consider the State’s proposals in the Project environmental assessment.

Another concern is the old growth logging authorized by the Project. Old growth-dependent wildlife species are a rare terrestrial community in Montana. Interior forest mammals, raptors, woodpeckers and songbirds need a certain level of closed canopy forest for cover as well as large dead trees for nesting or denning.  This type of forest can take hundreds of years to grow and is highly desired by commercial logging interests due to the economic value of large trees.

The law requires widely-distributed and connected old growth throughout the National Forest, and throughout each Geographic Area in the National Forest. Yet the Forest Service refused to provide any map of existing old growth at these scales.  Thus, the public is left to wonder how much old growth is left, and whether these rare, old-growth dependent forest species will go extinct from a failure to preserve an adequate amount of their habitat.

The government has to follow the law just like anyone else.  Now more than ever — when the government breaks the law, it is our obligation to stand up and stand in the way.

Please help us to challenge this illegal action in court, and force the government to follow the law.

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One might think that the National Park Service and the State of Montana, the two entities charged with stewardship of American bison, our national mammal, could do a better job. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Council on Fish and Wildlife think so, too, which is why we are challenging Yellowstone National Park’s recently released Bison Management Plan in federal court.

For context, tens of millions of wild bison once roamed across western North America. Today, wild bison occupy less than one percent of their former range.  Yet in spite of this, the Yellowstone Bison Management Plan does nothing to expand the range of the 5,000 wild bison that live almost exclusively in Yellowstone National Park.

Instead, the Park’s bison management plan is based on outdated and unscientific assumptions that result in thousands of bison being slaughtered to theoretically prevent them from infecting cattle with brucellosis, a disease that can cause cattle to abort.

The State of Montana, meanwhile, takes the position that almost all of the bison that cross the Park’s invisible boundaries at the wrong time and place should be killed.  Too bad no one told the bison that their natural annual migration was wrong.  The result has been about one-quarter of Yellowstone’s herd being slaughtered in years with deep snow for doing nothing more than following their genetic instincts to migrate to lower elevations in the winter for food.

Despite there never having been a documented case of bison transferring brucellosis to cattle, the government’s 25-year old management plan, originally issued in 2000, focused  on wild bison as a threat to the state’s cattle industry.

That, however, is no longer accepted science. The US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service commissioned the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering to undertake an exhaustive study to determine if the Park’s brucellosis management was working.

Contrary to the original assumptions, the study found that over the past 20 years, it has been wild elk — not wild bison — that transmitted brucellosis to livestock 27 times.  Wild bison were not responsible for a single transmission.

However, when the Park Service prepared and approved its new plan in 2024, the agency completely ignored the National Academies’ recommendations to switch the focus for brucellosis management in the Greater Yellowstone Area from wild bison to wild elk.  Although the Park Service insists that it used the “best available science,” not a single alternative in the new plan’s Environmental Impact Statement addressed the proven source of brucellosis transmissions to livestock, which are elk, not bison.

Astoundingly, the Park Service also failed to analyze where and when natural Yellowstone bison migration paths might overlap with cattle grazing on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands outside Yellowstone National Park.  Without this basic information, it’s impossible to know where cattle might possibly interact with wild bison. Consequently, we don’t know where — or even if — the Park and State’s aggressive and controversial management practices are needed to keep cattle separate from wild bison.

Additionally, and critically, after more than 20 years, the management tool most used by the government — the highly controversial “capture and slaughter” of thousands of bison — has failed to reduce the percentage of Yellowstone bison that test positive for brucellosis antibodies.  And yet the government just reauthorized the use of this tool that has proven to be ineffective at reducing brucellosis.

This is why we sued.  The Park’s new management plan fails to provide any rational reason whatsoever to continue hazing, capturing, and slaughtering the nation’s last herd of wild bison.  We are going to court to force the Park Service to follow the law, analyze these issues using the best available science, and stop the senseless harassment and pointless slaughter of our national mammal.

Please consider making a donation to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies to help us force the government to make management decisions based on science, not fear.  Mike Garrity is the Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

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The Garnet Mountains lie between the Blackfoot and Clark Fork Rivers, stretching from Bonner to east of Drummond, Montana.  They are south of the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat Wilderness areas and provide critical habitat to bull trout, grizzly bears, wolverines, and lynx, all of which are on the Endangered Species List.

Yet, the Bureau of Land Management, under the direction of former Montanan Tracy Stone-Manning, has approved a plan to massively deforest the range under the misleading name, the Clark Fork Face Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project.

The plan authorizes logging, burning, and thinning across 16,689 acres of BLM-managed lands over a 10-15 year period — more than 70% of the agency’s holdings in the Garnet Mountain Range.  Nearly 13 square miles (8,283 acres) are slated for commercial logging to produce four million board feet of timber a year.  Another 4,600 acres are slated to be burned, and mixed logging, thinning and burning are planned on another 2,146 acres.

Such massive deforestation, burning, and bulldozing a spider web of hauling roads will effectively sever the vital connectivity corridors for wildlife – and especially grizzly bears — between the Northern Continental Divide, Greater Yellowstone and Bitterroot ecosystems while contributing new sedimentation to the bull trout spawning tributaries.

NATURALLY THICK FORESTS

Although the BLM claims the forests are “overgrown” and have to be logged to return to “health,” the historic picture taken at the old mining town of Garnet in 1898 shows the native forests were naturally thick, disproving the claims by both the Forest Service and the BLM that forests in the Intermountain West were all open and uniformly park-like.

Given the picture was taken seven years before the Forest Service was even founded, it likewise disproves the agency’s claim that our forests have to be logged, burned and thinned because they are unnaturally thick due to fire suppression. This has been proven false by fire scientists like William Baker et al. 2024 but the agencies aren’t letting science get in the way of clearcutting lynx critical habitat.

Endangered Species Act

Under the Endangered Species Act, we are required to give the government 60 days-notice in which to fix their legal violations and have notified the agencies since we intend to add the Endangered Species Act violations to our lawsuit.

Although the Endangered Species Act requires agencies to recover species and the ecosystems upon which they depend so they can eventually be removed from the Endangered Species list.

The BLM is doing the opposite by refusing to consider the logging project’s cumulative threats, road-related disturbances, and the best-available science. Not only did the BLM fail to acknowledge that many of the “roads” it will use as haul roads are overgrown with trees, it failed to note the project violates the agency’s own wildlife protection standards in its Resource Management Plan.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The BLM failed to take a hard look at the impact of its clearcutting plan on climate change, which is strange since it’s well understood that forests, especially mature and old growth forests, are one of the planet’s most efficient means of absorbing carbon from the atmosphere — and they do for free. When the world is getting hotter every year, it makes no sense to log mature and old growth forests.

Conclusion

Taken together, there are so many problems and illegalities with this project that the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Center for Biological Diversity, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, Council on Wildlife and Fish, and Native Ecosystems Council  sued the BLM to stop this incredibly destructive project and protect critical habitat for native species in the Garnet Mountains.

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1) Halted Massive Illegal Old Growth Logging in Montana’s Little Belt Mountains.

The Alliance stopped the Horsefly logging and burning project in the Little Belt Mountains, north of White Sulphur Springs, Montana, to protect grizzly bear, wolverine, and northern goshawk habitat. The Helena-Lewis and Clark NF called for cutting and burning 10,343 acres—more than 16 square miles. To enable the logging, the Forest Service planned on bulldozing a stunning 40.7 miles of new logging roads. The federal district court ruled in our favor.

2) Saved Ashley National Forest Roadless Areas from Bulldozers and Chainsaws.

The Alliance filed a lawsuit to stop a Forest Service plan to bulldoze, log, and burn up to 147,000 acres (230 square miles!) of Inventoried Roadless Areas in the Ashley National Forest in northeast Utah. When faced with our lawsuit, the Forest Service decided to pull the project rather than lose in federal court.

Although facetiously called a “restoration project,” the Forest Service’s proposal blatantly violated the Federal Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which prohibits the cutting, sale or removal of trees inside Inventoried Roadless Areas except in very limited circumstances.

3) Stopped 320,000-acre, or 500-square mile, Pine Valley pinyon juniper logging and burning project in the Dixie National Forest in Utah.

The Alliance submitted detailed comments outlining the importance of pinyon juniper trees for wildlife, including for the pinyon jay, a bird that is dependent on pinyon pine seed and juniper berries to survive.  Pinyon jay populations have nose-dived, falling by over 85 percent in the last 50 years; mainly due to habitat loss caused by Forest Service and BLM projects.

4) Challenged Old Growth Logging in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana.

The Alliance and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit in September to stop the Gold Butterfly logging and burning project, east of Corvallis, Montana. The project would destroy wolverine and grizzly bear habitat and bull trout critical habitat in the Sapphire Mountains on the Bitterroot National Forest.

5) Sued to “Stop the Chop” in Colville National Forest.

The Alliance filed a lawsuit in federal district court to stop the Forest Service’s Sxwutn-Kaniksu Connections Trail Project which authorizes logging, burning and road bulldozing for the next 20 years across 141 square miles impacting more than 90% of the Colville National Forest within the project area in eastern Washington and on the Idaho border in grizzly bear and lynx habitat.  The Forest Service has agreed to stop starting new logging projects until the Court issues a final ruling.

6) Filed Lawsuit to Restore Endangered Species Act Protections for Wolves.

The goal of state governments in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming is to once again exterminate wolves from the Northern Rockies. They think the only good wolf is a dead wolf. The goal of our lawsuit is to protect wolves under the Endangered Species Act and to end the slaughter.

7) Won an Injunction to Stop Logging and Burning in grizzly and lynx habitat on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in southwest Montana.

The Forest Service secretly removed protections for over one million acres of lynx habitat in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest because it would have stopped habitat destruction projects like this.  Thanks to our great attorneys, the court ruled in our favor.

8) Took on the Forest Service in Federal Court to protect grizzly and wolverine habitat in the Bitterroot Mountains.

The Alliance filed a lawsuit against the Bitterroot National Forest challenging the Mud Creek Project early last year. Over the course of 20 years, the project would commercially log 13,700 acres—including 4,800 acres of clearcuts in areas with mature and old growth forests—and would intentionally burn an additional 40,360 acres of National Forest lands in southwest Montana.

9) Fought to get a Court Order requiring the Fish and Wildlife Service to Proceed with Grizzly Bear Recovery in the Bitterroot ecosystem in central Idaho and western Montana.

The Alliance won a big victory in federal district court when the court ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to move forward on recovering grizzly bears in this region, as required by the Endangered Species Act.

10) Still working to protect all Greater Yellowstone Wilderness Study Areas as Wilderness.

There’s a big controversy right now over the future of hundreds of thousands of acres of Forest Service lands abutting Yellowstone National Park and comprising the core of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. These lands are primarily in the Gallatin and Madison ranges, which are facing increasing pressures from a variety of development and recreational pressures.

The Alliance is fighting to pass the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, S. 1531, which would protect all Greater Yellowstone Wilderness Study Areas as Wilderness along with designating all roadless areas in the Northern Rockies as Wilderness.

What’s Next? Our attorneys are working hard to file three new lawsuits to stop even more proposed logging and clearcutting projects in grizzly, lynx, and wolverine habitat.

In addition to working on filing new lawsuits, our attorneys are waiting on court rulings challenging the East Paradise grazing project, the South Plateau logging project on the border of Yellowstone National Park, and the Hanna Flats project in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. And finally, we submitted comments to several dozen individual projects proposed by the Forest Service and BLM for wild lands across the Northern Rockies region.

Please consider donating on Giving Tuesday to help the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Counterpunch do more in 2025. We and our planet need your help.

Thank you for supporting our efforts to protect the Northern Rockies ecosystem.

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The Gold Butterfly logging and burning project, east of Corvallis, Montana, is in wolverine and grizzly bear habitat and bull trout critical habitat in the Sapphire Mountains on the Bitterroot National Forest. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit on September 9th against the Bitterroot National Forest seeking to stop the Gold Butterfly logging and burning project.

The decision for the Gold Butterfly project authorizes bulldozing 23.7 miles of new logging roads and adding 16.5 miles of illegal non-system roads into the system.

The decision calls for commercially logging 5,281 acres, including logging 567 acres of old growth forest, clearcutting across wide swaths of forest, and non-commercial tree-cutting and burning activities on an additional 2,084 acres

The Project is likely to kill whitebark pine trees, a species listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Commercial logging and bulldozing new logging roads are proposed on up to 3,082 acres of whitebark pine habitat. Logging could damage or kill some whitebark pine and whitebark pine trees could be cut due to misidentification. Intentional burning could also kill whitebark pine trees.

The Forest Service issued a site-specific Forest Plan Amendment for a new site-specific old growth definition that allows a 46% reduction in large trees per acre, unlimited reduction in canopy closure, and the whittling down of old growth forest stands to stands as small as four acres in size.

It is unclear which, if any, old growth management indicator species could inhabit these denuded stands. The record indicates that the Gold Butterfly Project activities will eliminate 2,998 acre of habitat for pine marten, and 2,451 acres of habitat for pileated woodpeckers, both of which are Forest Plan management indicator species for old growth forests.

Pileated woodpecker populations have both declined due to logging activity and widespread habitat destruction of mature forests and old growth forests.

The Gold Butterfly project makes a mockery of President Biden’s old growth forest protection plan. The Bitterroot National Forest has been violating the Forest Plan old growth standard for years, fundamentally changing old growth management across the Forest without ever analyzing the impact to the old growth management indicator species.

This project can cut down large trees to only 8 large trees per acre, and degrade thousands of acres of habitat for the old growth management indicator species. Rather than maximize retention of large trees as required by law, this project actually minimizes retention of large trees.

Moreover, the Healthy Forest Act also requires the Forest Service to follow the Forest Plan but the Gold Butterfly project violates the Forest Plan standards for elk road density and cover.

I am not sure why the Forest Service thinks the public wants millions of dollars of taxpayer funds spent destroying elk habitat on public lands when there is already a huge problem of elk fleeing to private lands where hunting is prohibited.

The Forest Service estimates that the Gold Butterfly project will result in a net loss of $4.2 million to federal taxpayers.

Finally, the Forest Service must prepare a supplemental EIS to address new information regarding grizzly bears and wolverines in the Sapphire Mountains. The Forest Service needs to take a “hard look” at potential impacts to grizzly bears and wolverines during this 8-year logging and road-building project.  Scientists have discovered a lactating female wolverine in the project area, and there have been multiple instances of confirmed grizzly bear presence in the Sapphire Mountains over the past year. Both grizzly bears and wolverines are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

It’s no wonder the vast majority of the thousands of people who commented opposed the Gold Butterfly project since it’s estimated to run 6,000 to 7,000 loaded logging trucks down Willow Creek Road, a dirt road.

Please consider making a donation to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies to help fight to protect old growth forests.

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There’s a boiling controversy right now over the future of hundreds of thousands of acres of Forest Service lands abutting Yellowstone National Park and comprising the core of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. These lands are primarily in the Gallatin and Madison Ranges which are facing increasing pressures from a variety of development and recreational pressures.

The vast majority of the area is protected by the Wilderness Study Areas in Senator Lee Metcalf’s Wilderness Study Act of 1977 which mandates that they be managed under the provisions of the Wilderness Act of 1964 until Congress decides to either designate them as “Big W” Wilderness Areas or release them for multiple abuse.

By law, that means no mechanized access or use is allowed there any more than it’s allowed in Montana’s other much-prized wilderness areas such as the Bob Marshall, Great Bear, Selway-Bitterroot, Absarokee-Beartooth and Lee Metcalf Wilderness.

Additionally, more than 20 years after Metcalf’s visionary law, President Clinton authorized the Roadless Rule which addresses the roadless lands outside the Wilderness Study Areas. The goal was to preserve those quickly vanishing areas of federal public lands that had not yet felt the degradation of the bulldozer’s blade.

Taken together, it comes to a very significant 240,000 acres of virtually pristine lands with incredible value as intact forest ecosystems for wildlife, protected headwaters for fish, our best and cheapest way to pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, and clean drinking water for Montanans. Those lands run from the Park all the way to Bozeman and Livingston and are the headwaters for the famed Yellowstone, Gallatin, and Madison Rivers.

The source of the controversy is the Gallatin Conservation and Recreation Act being promoted by three big money groups: The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and the Montana Wilderness Association (now doing business as Wild Montana). Ironically, they use the name, but they’ve changed their game, and under their proposal these lands would be chopped up and opened for motorized, mechanical, and industrial “wreckcreation” and even more logging by the rapacious timber industry.

They claim that commercial logging will be prohibited, but they neglect to tell the public that their loophole is big enough to drive a logging truck through and allows the Forest Service to bulldoze logging roads in watershed protection areas, if the Forest Service claims it has to log for “forest health.” The dirty little secret is that now almost every Forest Service logging proposal is for “forest health” or as retired Forest Service Gardiner District Ranger Hank Rate called it: “No tree left behind.”

The proposal is facing significant opposition not only from long-time wilderness advocates but the former Superintendent of Yellowstone Park and a number of former staffers and board members of the groups. Since the proposal has no sponsor and has not been introduced in Congress, “act” is perhaps the most pertinent word in the title since they act like they’re protecting wilderness, but are actually throwing wilderness quality lands open to degradation from any number of uses and abuses.

The simplest, most sensible, and least controversial way forward is to first designate the existing Wilderness Study Areas as full-on Wilderness since, by law, they’re already being managed as wilderness. If they really want to protect the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, they would likewise support wilderness designation  for all the remaining roadless lands as does the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, S. 1531, which is a bill before Congress.  NREPA has 12 sponsors in the Senate and protects the vital biological corridors connecting the ecosystems in this region and ensures the continued existence of threatened animals such as wolverines, lynx, and grizzly bears for future generations.

Please ask your member of Congress to cosponsor the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, S. 1531.

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The great news is the Ashley National Forest has been saved from a “landscape scale” deforestation plan in which the Forest Service planned to bulldoze in skid trails to log and burn up to 147,000 acres (230 square miles!) of Inventoried Roadless Areas. But when faced with the lawsuit brought by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, Center for Biological and Native Ecosystems Council, the Forest Service decided to pull the project rather than lose in federal court.
The Ashley N.F., located about 70 miles east of Salt Lake City, contains both the High Uintas Wilderness Area and King’s Peak, Utah’s tallest mountain. Although facetiously called a “restoration project,” the Forest Service proposal blatantly violatedthe Federal Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which prohibits the cutting, sale or removal of trees inside Inventoried Roadless Areas except in very limited circumstances.

While small trees can be cut to improve threatened, endangered, proposed or sensitive species ecosystems and habitat, wholesale commercial logging is prohibited. Not only didn’t the agency limit the logging to small trees, it did just the opposite and proposed clearcutting the roadless area for the benefit of the timber industry.

Instead of improving habitat for declining species, the plan would have destroyed habitat for Western forest birds. Five species, including the Rufous Hummingbird, have lost more than half of their population since 1970 and 71 different bird species live in and rely on the meadow-aspen-fir-spruce forests of northern Utah. Lynx and wolverine, both of which are listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, also rely on the healthy forest ecosystems the government is legally mandated to protect for these declining species.

A valid restoration alternative would entail removing or significantly reducing livestock grazing leases since cattle browse on aspen stands, which are declining throughout the Intermountain west. The aspen cannot regenerate naturally because cattle prefer the young aspen shoots, so they never get a chance to mature.

Yet the Forest Service did not consider any alternative that would do this. Instead their decision called for commercial logging and clearcutting big conifers and aspen stands, which the agency contended was to stimulate aspen sprouting. But destroying forests to save them has been scientifically rejected. Obviously it doesn’t make sense to require aspen to use limited and diminishing resources, such as water, to regenerate sprouts that end up in cattle’s stomachs.

The foundational purpose of the National Environmental Policy Act is to mandate that the government “look before you leap”and fully disclose the potential environmental impacts. The law also requires giving the public the opportunity for review, comment, and objection.

But the Forest Service refused to tell the public what types of logging would have occurred within Inventoried Roadless Areas, thus making it impossible to even understand the impacts of the proposal. When our attorneys told the Forest Service they were violating the Roadless Conservation Rule and the National Environmental Policy Act, they ignored us — at least until their attorneys apparently told the agency it was going to lose in court.

The Forest Service needs to be reminded that national forests belong to the American people, not the Forest Service, and not the timber and cattle industries. Please email or call Randy Moore, the Chief of the Forest Service, and tell him to quit logging Inventoried Roadless Areas as well as reminding him that the agency, just like the rest of us, has to follow the law. His email address is Randy.Moore@USDA.gov. His phone number is (202) 205-8439.

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On June 27, 2024, a federal court halted an illegal logging project on federal public lands in the Little Belt Mountains of Montana.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council filed their lawsuit to stop the Horsefly project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest in April 2021. The project called for cutting and burning trees on 10,343 acres, which is more than 16 square miles. To enable the logging, the agency planned on bulldozing a stunning 40.7 miles of new logging roads in the Little Belt Mountains north of White Sulphur Springs, Montana.

The scope of the massive Horsefly landscape-altering proposal is alarming and because the project violated federal law, it had to be enjoined.

The Forest Service used a number of euphemisms in a transparent attempt to disguise what used to be more honestly called logging. For instance, the agency called 3,278 acres of commercial logging ‘intermediate treatment,’ 1,049 acres of clearcutting ‘regeneration harvest,’ 409 acres of clearcutting and possible burning ‘meadow restoration,’ and 465 acres of non-commercial logging ‘rearrangement of fuels’. They’re ‘rearranging’ them alright: from forest ecosystems to stump fields.

This is an ecosystem, not a private tree farm, and so we have to maintain the habitat for sensitive wildlife species.  One of those species is the northern goshawk, which has been declining in population, and which the forest plan lists as an old-growth forest management indicator species. Due to the importance of this species, the law requires 100% of goshawk nets to be monitored annually.

In 2018, the entire Forest was surveyed for goshawks and the Forest Service found an alarming 47% decline in active goshawk nests, which the agency failed to disclose to the public in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act. The agency also ignored its own Forest Plan requirement to issue an evaluation report if active nests decline by 10%.”

The Court’s ruling was very straightforward on the failure of the Forest Service to follow the law. As the Order reads: “The Court agrees with Alliance that the Forest Service’s failure to disclose and evaluate the decline in active goshawk nesting territories violated both NFMA and NEPA. . . . Federal Defendants all but concede that the Forest Service’s failure to disclose the decrease in active goshawk nesting territories to the public in the EA and failure to comply with the Forest Plan requirement to conduct an evaluation report if active nests decline by 10% amounts to a violation of NFMA.” Yet the Forest Service continues to log the last remaining mature and old growth forests and goshawks are in trouble.

The Court’s order remanded the project authorization to the agency, and enjoined the project pending compliance with federal law.  We follow the law every day, and the Forest Service must also follow the law.  When a government agency violates the law, it must be held accountable in court. It’s not easy to fight the federal government, which has far more resources than we do, but nonetheless we are committed to making the government follow its own laws to protect our native wildlife and public land ecosystems. Despite attacks by politicians, intimidation tactics, and misinformation campaigns, we won’t be stopped.  We are determined to continue with this critical work.

Please consider helping us continue to fight to protect old growth forests and make the Forest Service follow the law.

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A recent column by the Anaconda Sportsmen Club disparaged the Alliance for the Wild Rockies for challenging the illegal Pintler Face logging project in southwest Montana in federal court. What they failed to disclose to you is that federal courts have already established as illegal the same type of actions the Forest Service has taken for Pintler Face.

So the Forest Service knew its approval of the logging project would likely be held to be illegal, but it authorized the project anyways.

For example, when it comes to lynx, the biggest threat is logging. So in order to allow for more logging, the Forest Service often attempts to avoid protections for this threatened species. In our case, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest secretly – and illegally – eliminated 1.1 million acres of mapped lynx habitat (on paper) to enable more clearcutting, burning and road-building in formerly-protected lynx habitat, including in the Pintler Face project area. Without any public process, this habitat was “erased” and will no longer receive protections under the Forest Plan. Multiple courts have ruled against the Forest Service for attempting to eliminate protected lynx habitat in this manner without any public process or analysis of the impacts to lynx from this drastic action. Our lawsuit will remedy this undisputedly illegal conduct.

When it comes to grizzly bears, another threatened species, the biggest threat is roads. So in order to allow for more logging, the Forest Service often undercounts roads in grizzly bear habitat to minimize the impact to this species. This is an important factor for grizzly bear survival since most bears are killed within 1/3 of a mile of a road and almost all grizzly bears are killed within 2/3 of a mile of a road. Numerous recent court decisions have ruled against the Forest Service for this repeated conduct – failing to accurately count all rounds, including roads with known illegal motorized use, when analyzing impacts to grizzly bears. Additionally, a grizzly bear experiences a real-life landscape not an imaginary landscape – so that means that all roads on private property, State lands, and BLM lands must also be included in grizzly bear analyses. In this case, the Forest Service violated both legal mandates, and our lawsuit will remedy this conduct.

Our lawsuit also asks for a new environmental impact statement because the impact of this project could be significant. In addition to harming threatened species, we are also concerned with the treatment of old growth forests, dead tree habitats, and elk displacement from public lands.

First, let’s look at their description of “over mature” forests which they claim need clearcutting. These are normally referred to as “old growth forests,” of which there are so few remaining that President Biden specifically ordered the Forest Service to protect them. Far from needing “harvest,” as if they were a crop instead of an ecosystem, old growth forests are incredibly important to the survival of threatened species such as the lynx, grizzly bears, and wolverines. All are found on the Pintler Face and all evolved for millennia in natural, not “managed” old growth forests. Furthermore, in addressing the increasingly extreme climate problems, old growth forests are the best, most effective, and best of all, free method of pulling greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.

Additionally, dead trees provide critical habitat for wildlife and critical soil structure as they break down, and they have served these roles for millennia.  The downed and decaying trees provide security and thermal cover for big game, nest sites for forest birds, and dens for mammals. Almost half of western forest birds, such as the northern goshawk, are declining and five species, including the Rufous Hummingbird, have lost more than half of their population since 1970. According to Montana Outdoors, a magazine published by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, “In Montana, more than 60 species of wildlife use dead trees or logs for feeding, nesting, roosting,resting, denning or drumming.”

Third, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks repeatedly expresses serious concerns about habitat degradation from roads and logging on National Forest lands because it displaces elk from public lands to private lands, most of which are closed to public hunting. Thus, one would expect the Anaconda Sportsmen to support reducing, not expanding, roads on National Forest lands.

Finally, and somewhat humorously, Anaconda Sportsmen claim that due to natural downfall, the forest is “impossible to negotiate by most species.” Granted, it might be difficult for humans or ATVs, but as all elk hunters know, huge bull elk with full racks have no problem almost magically disappearing into thick old forests.

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It’s absolutely one of the worst places in the Rockies for clearcuts. For the Forest Service to propose a project like this in essential habitat for lynx, grizzly bear, and wolverine — which are all listed under the Endangered Species Act — simply makes no sense. Consequently, we’re left with no choice but to take the federal government to court and halt this clearcutting, burning, and bulldozing disaster.

Three conservation groups, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection and Native Ecosystems Council, filed suit to halt the Pintler Face Project on February 16th in Federal District Court in Missoula, Monte.

The project area is enormous. At 73,624 acres — 115 square miles — it will basically deforest the south face of the Anaconda-Pintler Range, which is bordered by the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness Area.

Located about 10 miles northwest of Wise River, Montana, the project calls for bulldozing in 11.1 miles of new logging roads for 3,459 acres of clearcuts, intentional burning and logging 564 acres of aspen, 5,793 acres of commercial logging, and 1,532 acres of pre-commercial logging. Then add in burning 1,532 acres of Douglas fir understory and burning or cutting another 5,669 acres.

In a rather Orwellian ploy, the Forest Service tried to get around the legal requirements for protecting habitat for lynx by secretly eliminating 1.1 million acres of mapped lynx habitat on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. That included eliminating lynx habitat from the project area to enable the logging, burning and bulldozing. Then the agency acted like that habitat designation never existed and did so without any public process or environmental effects analysis, which is illegal under the National Environmental Policy Act.

A federal district court ruled for us on this issue in Idaho many years ago, and again last year when the Custer-Gallatin National Forest did the exact same thing with the Great Red Lodge Area logging project, so it’s not like the agency doesn’t know excluding the public and removing critical habitat designations is illegal.

The Forest Service again violated the National Environmental Policy Act by unlawfully tying the project’s Environmental Assessment and Decision Notice to its 2020 remapping/removal of lynx habitat. But the law is clear that the Forest Service can only do so for documents that the public has had the opportunity for review and comment in an official EIS — not on a secret document that the Forest Service kept from the public.

The grizzly bear analysis for the project also violates the law:  the Biological Opinion, which was done by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, failed to use the best available science, and fails to adequately address the environmental baseline as well as the direct, indirect, and cumulative effects on grizzly bears — all of which are required by law.

Although the agencies conclude that the project is likely to adversely affect grizzly bears, the Biological Opinion was severely deficient and failed to provide any meaningful analysis of the cumulative effects on grizzlies. Given the project is expected to take 5-10 years to implement, it’s unbelievable these two federal agencies ignored the potential effects on grizzly bears in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Not only did the agencies ignore the cumulative effects on grizzly bears from roads and logging activities on nearby state and private lands, but they also ignored the impacts from 145 miles of illegally created and unauthorized routes in the project area.

We won a court decision stopping the Ripley logging project in the Kootenai National Forest last year on this same issue. These are established legal precedents and given the enormous size of this project, the Forest Service also violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement.

The public is getting tired of the serial law-breakers at the Forest Service, and the Biden administration should know better. It’s ridiculous that we should continually have to challenge — and stop — the agency’s illegal, poorly designed, and insufficiently analyzed projects in court. None of this would be necessary if the agency just did its job, paid attention to the court decisions they’ve lost over and over again, and started following the law instead of continually trying to evade the law to continue massive deforestation.

Since Congress refuses to make the Forest Service follow the law, please consider donating to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies to help us make the Forest Service follow the law.

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