Approving a magistrate judge’s recommendations, on October 5th the Montana federal district court ruled for the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Flathead-Lolo-Bitterroot Citizen Task Force in their lawsuits opposing the Soldier-Butler timber sale. The court ruled that the Forest Service failed to comply with its own self-imposed rules to protect elk winter range More

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In so many ways the future hangs in the balance as Congress debates the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill and $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Although encouraging the use of more electric vehicles and increasing solar and wind energy will definitely reduce the amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere, there are also huge problems More

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The Alliance for the Wild Rockies went to federal court on Tuesday to halt the Ripley project, a massive clearcutting and logging project in Cabinet-Yaak grizzly habitat in the Kootenai National Forest southeast of Libby, Montana. The Ripley logging project calls for almost 17 square miles of commercial logging (10,854 acres) including 5 square miles of More

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The Forest Service is proposing the South Plateau logging project with almost 9 square miles of clear-cuts, south and west of West Yellowstone. People should know what the area could look like while there’s still time to stop it. The Forest Service claimed that utter destruction, pictured above, in the Helena National Forest would be More

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If you haven’t been to the Cabinet-Yaak region in northwest Montana, you ought to go. You will find an incredibly beautiful landscape that alternates from rugged, glaciated peaks, to dense coniferous forests with lush meadows and riparian areas along the meandering Yaak River. If you are exceptionally lucky, you might see one of the rare Cabinet-Yaak grizzly More

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Montana’s Governor Greg Gianforte and U.S. Senator Steve Daines recently claimed “frivolous” lawsuits had to be stopped so more logging could occur in our dwindling National Forests. But there’s nothing frivolous about the Alliance for the Wild Rockies filing a 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue the Forest Service to stop the Ripley logging project More

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It’s rare, but sometimes when conservationists point out problems with decisions by federal agencies the government backs down. That’s just what happened when the Forest Service recently pulled its prior decision approving a plan by Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to use rotenone to poison out 67 miles of streams and lakes in More

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On July 23, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies received its second victory in the fight against the Hanna Flats logging project on public National Forest lands in northern Idaho.  A federal court suspended the project in light of evidence that the government likely abused the legal process when it refused to conduct a public environmental More

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It’s well known and scientifically documented that bull trout, Montana’s largest native salmonid, require clean, cold, and connected rivers and streams to survive. That’s why, in the midst of a record-breaking hot and dry summer, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, and Save the Bull Trout are challenging the U.S. Fish More

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Clearcuts are not illegal, but they should be. Yet politicians like Montana Sen. Steve Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte mislead the public by claiming the Forest Service no longer clearcuts. But obviously the Forest Service and timber industry are still clearcutting national forests. Case in point, the Custer Gallatin National Forest just approved — then More

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Clearcut, Helena National Forest. Photo: Steve Platt.

Many politicians think they can get away with misleading the public. For example, Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) and Montana Republican Governor Greg Gianforte claim the Forest Service no longer clearcuts our national forests. Obviously, as the picture shows, the timber industry is still clearcutting national forests with the Forest Service’s blessing. Case in point, Montana’s Custer Gallatin National Forest just signed a draft decision for the South Plateau logging project – literally on the border of Yellowstone National Park – that calls for clearcutting 5,551 acres or 8.6 square miles of forests in grizzly bear and lynx habitat. To haul out all of this timber, the Forest Service plans to bulldoze in 56.8 miles of new logging roads.

Clearcutting is occurring throughout the Northern Rockies. The Kootenai National Forest’s Black Ram logging project calls for clearcutting 1,783 acres in grizzly bear habitat and in federally- designated lynx Critical Habitat. The Flathead National Forest wants to clearcut 468 acres of grizzly and lynx habitat between Swan Lake and Flathead Lake.

Clearcuts and their logging roads are very bad for grizzly bears. Most grizzlies killed by poachers are within 500 yards of a logging road because clearcuts don’t provide any hiding over from poachers. It is much easier to see a grizzly from a road in the middle of a clearcut than from a road through a thick forest.

Clearcuts are also bad for old growth forest dependent species like lynx and birds such as goshawks. Lynx avoid clearcuts for up to 50 years for many reasons, mainly because their main prey, snowshoe hare aren’t there. Snowshoe hare feed the world of forest carnivores, but after a clearcut, the hare are all either eaten by predators or they leave for better habitat. When there are no hare for lynx to eat they starve to death.

Clearcuts not yet recovered are likely to be avoided by lynx in the winter. (Squires et al. 2010; Squires et al. 2006a.) Lynx winter habitat, provided only in older, multi-storied forests, is critical for lynx preservation. (Squires et al. 2010.) Winter is the most constraining season for lynx in terms of resource use; starvation mortality has been found to be the most common during winter and early spring. (Squires et al. 2010.)

Fear of fire is often given as a reason to clearcut. The thinking is, if the forest is cut down then there can’t be a forest fire. Of course this is not true. Wildfires burn through clearcuts full of weeds much faster than through a thick forests because there are no trees to slow the wind – and high winds are the primary drivers of large wildfires.

According to Philip Higuera, professor of fire ecology at the University of Montana: “It’s true that if cut, there is less fuel in the forests. But in a lot of cases, there is what’s called slash—woody debris—left on the ground that will carry fire across the forest floor, which is what you need for it to spread. The simple answer—if you want to eliminate fire, then pave it. There will be no fire.” One reason President Teddy Roosevelt created national forests was to protect watersheds, but pavement does not make for great watersheds.

While clearcuts are not against the law, most people don’t like them for many of the above reasons. Instead of outlawing clearcuts, Congress wrote other environmental laws intended to limit the destruction of forest wildlife habitat such as the Endangered Species Act, the  National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Forest Management Act. As long as the clearcutting was not destroying habitat for imperiled native species, they could go forward. While Congress did not create a police agency to enforce these environmental laws, it wrote provisions empowering citizens to act as “private attorneys general” to protect natural resources. If the citizens win, the federal government must pay the citizens’ attorneys their legal fees. Since tiny environmental groups like Alliance for the Wild Rockies do not have any staff attorneys, we do not get any of this money, it all goes to the attorneys.

If the Forest Service ignores our filed objections and concerns, we are left with no choice but to do what Congress envisioned, hire an attorney, and sue to stop the clearcutting. Please consider helping us protect grizzly bear and lynx habitat in Yellowstone and throughout the Northern Rockies by stopping out-of-control clearcutting.

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Many politicians think they can get away with misleading the public. For example, Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) and Montana Republican Governor Greg Gianforte claim the Forest Service no longer clearcuts our national forests. Obviously, as the picture shows, the timber industry is still clearcutting national forests with the Forest Service’s blessing. Case in point, Montana’s More

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Many politicians think they can get away with misleading the public. For example, Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) and Montana Republican Governor Greg Gianforte claim the Forest Service no longer clearcuts our national forests. Obviously, as the picture shows, the timber industry is still clearcutting national forests with the Forest Service’s blessing. Case in point, Montana’s More

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One of the Trump administration’s worst projects, which would have burned a million acres of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, has been halted in its tracks by Biden’s Forest Service after the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Yellowstone to Uintas submitted detailed comments opposing this insane idea.

The Targhee Prescribed Fire project was stuffed through in the closing days of the Trump administration and would undoubtedly have been ruled illegal since the agency attempted to use a Categorical Exclusion to avoid environmental analysis on the project, which would have burned a million acres of the Targhee portion of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. It is indicative of the total disregard for the law that Trump and his political appointees would even propose a project that included recommended wilderness, the Palisades Wilderness Study Area, and Inventoried Roadless Areas on the western side of Yellowstone National Park.

To put it in perspective, one million acres is 1,562.5 square miles, nearly the size of the entire Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex – which is the fifth largest in the Lower 48 states. That’s a million acres of carbon-absorbing forests with functioning ecosystems that are home to grizzly bears, lynx, and wolverines and which the Trump administration wanted to destroy.

It’s also worth noting that the Targhee National Forest was the site of the largest clear-cut timber sale in the Lower 48 states in the 1970s. Back in 2005 the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council sued the Forest Service to stop a massive old-growth logging project. In that case, which we won, Federal Judge Lynn Winmill ruled that the Forest Service had violated the Targhee Forest Plan because it had already logged almost all of the old-growth forests and by law could not log again until old-growth habitat was restored, which would take several hundred years.

Judge Winmill also noted that a 1996 Forest Service inventory of old-growth “manipulated the data to reach a desired result.” Specifically, the agency ignored its own study from two years earlier that not only documented very little old growth left but was riddled with statistical errors such as arbitrarily adding an extra inch to the diameter of the trees it surveyed to inflate the calculations for old-growth.

It comes as no surprise that the environmentally disastrous Trump administration was desperate to approve the project in the final days of his presidency. But using a “Categorical Exclusion” to exempt the entire project from National Environmental Policy Act was an over-the-top abuse. Categorical Exclusions were originally intended for minor routine maintenance needs like painting outhouses — not million acre burning projects in grizzly bear and lynx habitat on the border of Yellowstone National Park. By not taking the legally-required “hard look” at direct or indirect effects the Forest Service implied there would have been no cumulative effects – a wholly unwarranted assumption since the agency didn’t even bother to document existing conditions or the project’s potential impacts.

Moreover, by not conducting an environmental impact analysis or allowing public review and comment the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act, misrepresented the presence of endangered species in the project area, and ignored the requirements of its own Targhee Forest Plan.

Under Trump, the Caribou-Targhee National Forest also proposed to burn up to 750,000 acres in the Caribou portion of the forest – and once again attempted to exempt it from the legally-required environmental analysis. Now the Biden administration has ordered that project halted until the Forest Service follows the law, writes an Environmental Assessment, and submits it for public review and comment.

The recently re-introduced Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act is the sensible, practical and workable alternative to Trump’s delusional theory that humans can manage forests better than Mother Nature. Instead of spending millions of dollars burning millions of acres of National Forest, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act would designate all roadless areas in the Northern Rockies as wilderness. Congress must act to protect the National Forests of the Northern Rockies not only because they can keep species like lynx and wolverines from going extinct, but since living forests pull huge amounts of carbon from our overheated atmosphere, saving these forests might also keep humans from going extinct.

You can help by asking your Senators and Representatives to cosponsor the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act. And if you’d like to help us continue to protect and restore the Northern Rockies we’d gratefully welcome your support at the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

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Moose ponds, Beartooth Range, Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) which lives up to its name, would protect the best functioning ecosystems and wildlands in the Rockies.  On March 10th, Representative Carolyn Maloney along with 40 cosponsors, including AOC and Raul Grijalva, Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, reintroduced NREPA in the U.S. House of Representatives.

NREPA was written by scientists and citizens from the Northern Rockies including Dr. John Craighead. Dr. Craighead was named by National Geographic as one of the top 100 scientists of the 20th century.

23 Million Acres of New Wilderness

The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act would: designate all of the inventoried roadless areas in the Northern Rockies as wilderness, protecting approximately 23 million acres of land that is home to a vital ecosystem and watersheds in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Eastern Washington, and Oregon.

Biological Corridors

NREPA establishes a system to connect biological corridors, preserving the migration patterns and habitats of native plants and animals and allowing this ecosystem to flourish.  It also preserves swaths of forest biomes that are carbon sinks to counteract greenhouse gas emissions.

Water

NREPA designates about 1,800 miles of rivers and streams as Wild and Scenic Rivers. Water is the lifeblood of the West and we need to protect it.   By protecting the forests that shade snow high in the mountains, NREPA also keeps water’s beneficial uses available downstream until later in the season when it is most needed by protecting the forests that shade the snow high in the mountains.

Creates Thousands of new Jobs 

Much like the great work done by the revered Civilian Conservation Corps, NREPA puts 2300 people to work at the prevailing wage restoring over one million acres of damaged habitat and watersheds by restoring clearcuts and removing 6300 miles of old logging roads.

Saves Money

NREPA saves the federal government millions of dollars annually by reducing wasteful subsidies to the logging industry.  It also closes unintended legal loopholes, that have left many of the areas protected by the Clinton Roadless Rule vulnerable to clearcutting and roadbuilding.

Free Carbon Capture

“Our forests and grasslands are one of our nation’s greatest treasures and one of the most effective natural carbon captures that exist to help combat the effects of climate change,” Secretary Vilsack recently said.  NREPA battles climate change by permanently protecting roadless lands as Wilderness, which is one of our Nation’s best and most effective tools for reducing global warming. National Forests absorb an astounding 12 percent of the carbon that America creates for free and our unlogged and old-growth forests absorb the most carbon.

Protects Habitat to Keep Species from Going Extinct

NREPA reduces species loss and conflict by protecting the remaining habitat for native species in the Northern Rockies that were here when the Lewis and Clark Expedition passed through and are still present more than 200 years later. Wildlife populations cannot survive for long periods of time on isolated islands of habitat. Populations eventually become genetically weaken and suffer from inbreeding effects.  Protecting these lands will help recover threatened and endangered species including bull trout, lynx, and grizzly bears as well as wolverine, fisher and many other species currently facing inbreeding and, ultimately, extinction due to the lack of connecting corridors.  If we pass an ecosystem bill like NREPA, Western North America offers us one of the best opportunities to halt or stop what has been termed the Earth’s “sixth great extinction event.”

Summary 

NREPA protects the environment, fights climate change, creates jobs, and saves taxpayers millions of dollars in logging subsidies simply by designating existing roadless areas as Wilderness. Please ask your congressional delegation to support the one proposal that promises to give future generations a chance to enjoy the diverse wildlife, clean rivers, and majestic forested landscapes that were handed down to all Americans by generations past. Only NREPA does that.  Please help us protect one of the best ecosystems in the lower 48 states before it is too late.

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Photo: Sara Johnson.

The Forest Service claims the recently withdrawn Middle Fork Henry’s Aspen Enhancement project in Idaho’s Caribou National Forest would have promoted the growth of more aspen. But aspen regenerates by putting out shoots, not through seeds, and it’s extensively documented that the major cause of aspen decline in the West is cattle browsing and trampling the young aspen, thus greatly limiting regeneration.

Despite the many excuses the Trump administration used to promote more logging, aspens and conifers have existed together for millennia before cattle were introduced in the West and logging is not the answer. If the Forest Service really wants to regenerate aspen stands it is imperative to follow the science and actively minimize cattle grazing in aspen groves. Unfortunately, the Middle Fork Henry’s project would increase grazing, not reduce it. Yet, instead of considering viable alternatives that would lighten the grazing pressure, the agency chose to destroy existing habitat for lynx and grizzly bear as well as other old growth- dependent species such as the Flammulated owl.

The Caribou National Forest’s Revised Forest Plan’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS)  identifies aspen as a “habitat-at-risk” and specifically notes that aspen was “historically overgrazed” — which likely contributed to aspen decline due to the loss of regeneration. It is also notes that aspen need a “diversity of seral stages,” putting the loss of tender aspen shoots to cattle grazing in direct contradiction to the Forest Plan’s management recommendations. The document goes on to say aspen is at high departure from historic conditions in part due to heavy grazing which eliminates regeneration. Cattle grazing is what’s killing aspen.

While it’s true there’s an on-going aspen ecological crisis in the Intermountain West, the decimation of aspen stands is well-documented to be caused by cattle grazing. Unless the new shoots are protected, aspen are unable to successfully regenerate due to the continued browsing/trampling/rubbing by cows and eventually die over time due to this repeated browsing.

The problem of over-grazing and trampling by livestock has been repeatedly identified (e.g., Earnst et al. 2012; Beschta et al. 2014). For example, only one of 40 aspen stands surveyed on Montana’s Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest had healthy, surviving aspen suckers due to a failure of Forest Service programs to limit grazing of aspen stems by livestock (Burton 2004).

Cattle, not Wildlife are the Problem 

The standard claim made that the heavy browsing of aspen suckers is due to wildlife, including mule deer instead of cattle grazing, was specifically monitored recently by Ratner et al. (2019). This monitoring program documented 4.5 times the amount of cattle grazing on aspen in two weeks than mule deer use over six months. Moreover, forage utilization by mule deer prior to livestock grazing was unobservable. But when livestock grazing was added to the mule deer use during the two weeks of monitoring, a stunning 70 to 90 percent of the understory vegetation’s annual production was consumed. This report also noted that trampling of soils by livestock may also play a role in depressing aspen recruitment on allotments.

Mixed Aspen/Connifer Stands Natural

As in the Middle Fork Henry’s project, mixed aspen/conifer stands are a natural condition on the landscape, and clearly do not represent “unnatural” conditions that need management intervention. The Forest Service even notes that succession of conifers into aspen is common as long as a conifer seed source exists, but that succession to only conifers may take hundreds of years (RFP 3-116). Simply put, there is no scientifically-supported ecological reason to remove conifers from aspen stands – particularly in Inventoried Roadless Areas. Controlling livestock use is the obvious management intervention needed, not cutting out conifers.

We would support a Forest Service project  limiting cattle grazing to restore aspen stands since it’s a scientifically-proven methodology.

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On March 8th, a federal court in Idaho ruled that a legal challenge to a natural gas pipeline can proceed. The lawsuit was filed by two grassroots conservation groups —  Yellowstone to Uintas Connection and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies — and it challenges the proposed Crow Creek Pipeline in southeastern Idaho and western Wyoming.  The proposed pipeline would permanently cut through five National Forest Inventoried Roadless Areas, which are areas with crucial habitat for a declining sage grouse population, as well as habitat for other endangered species such as grizzly bears, lynx, and wolverines.

The federal agencies had moved to dismiss the case, but on Monday, the court rejected that challenge.  The court held that the motion to dismiss was “meritless” and that challenges to “local distribution” pipelines like the Crow Creek pipeline must proceed in federal district court.  The court pointedly held:  “Defendants seem to think because the Crow Creek Pipeline will cross the state line of Idaho and Wyoming, the [Natural Gas Act]  ipso facto continues to apply despite a local distribution service area determination. But the [Natural Gas Act] itself, the caselaw cited, and the record in this case conclusively and swiftly put an end to such a meritless legal position.”

Last November the Forest Service authorized a private company to clear-cut a 50-foot wide, 18.2-mile-long corridor through National Forest public lands for construction of an underground natural gas pipeline in southeastern Idaho.  Our public lands are for the public and for our public wildlife — they do not exist for the convenience or profit of the fossil fuel industry.  We are happy that the court ruled our lawsuit can proceed. We will continue to fight this pipeline and the fossil fuel industry’s refusal to acknowledge that the times are changing and we need to be focusing federal government subsidies on renewable energy and climate-smart policies —  not continued reliance on fossil fuels.

The federal government’s authorization of the pipeline is rife with legal violations.  The Forest Service failed to analyze the impact of the pipeline construction on three species that may be present in the area and are listed as ‘threatened’ under the Endangered Species Act — grizzly bears, lynx, and the yellow-billed cuckoo.  The agency also failed to analyze the impact of the project on directly adjacent lynx critical habitat.  The agency also failed to disclose and demonstrate compliance with the agency’s own Forest Plan requirements for sage grouse from the 2003 Revised Forest Plan and 2015 Forest Plan amendment.  Nor did the government analyze the cumulative effects on sage grouse as required by the Forest Plan and the National Environmental Policy Act.

The Crow Creek pipeline proposal would result in wildlife displacement and habitat fragmentation in the regionally-significant wildlife corridor between Yellowstone National Park and the Uintas. The pipeline utility corridor will be, in actual effect, a permanent 18.2-mile motorized trail through five different National Forest Inventoried Roadless Areas and thus will cause permanent vegetation removal,  increased sight-lines for poaching, increased noxious weed introductions, and abundant new opportunities for illegal motor vehicle use in perpetuity.  That means motorized vehicles will use this corridor in perpetuity to maintain and inspect the pipeline and remove vegetation from lands that would be designated as wilderness under the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act currently before the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

There are exactly zero benefits to public lands or wildlife from this project.  This project is so inconsistent with the existing Forest Plan for these public lands that the Forest Service had to amend its Forest Plan for six different management prescriptions in order for the project to be lawful.  This site-specific amendment to change the management plan for the entire National Forest for the benefit of a private natural gas company is a classic example of what land-use planners call ‘spot zoning.’  That means giving one person or entity special treatment while expecting everyone else to follow the rules. In essence, the federal taxpayers who own these public lands are subsidizing the profit margin of a private natural gas company at the expense of the ecological integrity of their public lands and wildlife.

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Targhee Creek, Targhee National Forest, Lionhead Area, Continental Divide, Targhee National Forest, Idaho. Photo: George Wuerthner.

Last December the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection took the Trump administration’s Forest Service to federal court over plans to massively log and burn over 40,000 acres in the very headwaters of the world-famous Henry’s Fork of the Snake River. We are exceptionally pleased to announce that due to the very serious legal challenges we brought as well as the change in administrations, the Middle Henry’s Fork project has been canceled.

The clear waters of this incredible wild trout fishery wind through the mile-high caldera on the border of Yellowstone National Park. Besides being voted #1 out of the nation’s top 100 flyfishing rivers by Trout Unlimited, the headwaters of this huge drainage contain what’s left of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest’s old-growth stands and provides irreplaceable habitat for grizzly bear, lynx, wolverine, gray wolf, boreal toad, Columbia spotted frog, American three-toed woodpecker, boreal owl, great gray owl, bald eagle, northern hoshawk, peregrine falcon, trumpeter swan, elk, marten, moose, mule deer, and snowshoe hare.

Project would have destroyed nearly 66 square miles of endangered species habitat

The Forest Service decision called for logging and burning an astounding 42,274 acres of the Henry’s Fork watershed — more than one-third of the drainage’s120,000 acres — which is the largest on the entire Caribou-Targhee National Forest.

The simple truth is that the Targhee was the site of the largest clear-cut timber sale in the Lower 48 states in the 1970s. In a 2005 lawsuit, Federal Judge Lynn Winmill ruled that the Forest Service had violated the Targhee Forest Plan because it had already logged almost all of the old-growth forests — and by law could not log again until enough old-growth habitat was restored.

Winmill noted that a 1996 Forest Service inventory of old-growth “manipulated the data to reach a desired result” and ignored its study from two years earlier that documented very little old growth left and was riddled with statistical errors, such as arbitrarily adding an extra inch to the diameter of the trees it surveyed to inflate the calculations for old-growth.

It should come as no surprise that the Trump administration was trying to stuff this project through in the final days of his environmentally disastrous presidency. But using a “Categorical Exclusion” to exempt the entire project from National Environmental Policy Act was an over-the-top abuse. Categorical Exclusions were originally intended for minor routine maintenance needs like painting outhouses — not massive clearcutting and burning projects in grizzly bear and lynx habitat on the border of Yellowstone National Park.

By not taking the legally-required ‘hard look at direct or indirect effects’ the Forest Service implied there would have been no cumulative effects – a wholly unwarranted assumption since the agency didn’t even bother to document existing conditions or the project’s potential impacts.

Moreover, by not conducting any environmental impact analysis or allowing public review and comment the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act, misrepresented the presence of endangered species in the project area, and ignored the requirements of its own Targhee Forest Plan.

In conclusion, this was a horrific plan to decimate remaining old-growth forest at the cost of dumping sediment in the headwaters of the world-famous Henry’s Fork of the Snake River and destroying critical habitat for a vast range of endangered and native species. We are proud to have challenged the Trump administration’s terrible project – and won – thus protecting this incredible old-growth forest as well as the waters and wildlife it supports. We would also like to thank the Biden administration for pulling this horrible project and thank the Bricklin & Newman law firm in Seattle for representing us.

If you would like to help us continue to protect and restore the Northern Rockies, we’d welcome your support at Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

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