Lawsuit Targets Logging Groups Say Salvage Logging Threatens Grizzly Population

A pair of sizable salvage timber sales will push a fragile population of Kootenai National Forest grizzlies to the brink and harm other big-game animals, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Missoula.

The sales - one on the North Fork of Big Creek and the other on the South Fork of the Yaak River - will add large clearcuts and too many roads in the process of taking 54 million board feet of timber, said Bill Haskins, executive director of the Ecology Center.

The Ecology Center, Inland Empire Public Lands Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund are behind the suit, which targets the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Forest Service said it hasn’t seen the suit and refused to even confirm the size of the sales.

“The general problem with the Kootenai over the last several years is the forest plan was written with an out clause,” Haskins said. “That allows the forest supervisor to excuse himself from forest plan standards whenever he wants and that has happened 80 percent of the time.”

In this case, forest plan standards call for clearcuts no larger than 40 acres. Between the two sales, there are clearcuts up to 200 acres, Haskins said.

In addition, many of the proposed clearcuts will happen beside existing clearcuts, leaving huge openings in the forest. That and additional roads will drive off the grizzlies, environmentalists say.

“This little tiny population of bears has shown slight improvement,” said Liz Sedler, who owns land near the proposed logging and is president of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “This is back-sliding.”

A portion of the areas slated for the logging were involved in 1994 wildfires. The logging will include spruce, Douglas fir, larch and cedar.

The timber sales are being offered under a special Congressional program, passed last summer, that suspends so-called salvage logging from all environmental laws. That leaves the conservation groups suing under the Administrative Procedures Act. They allege that it was arbitrary and capricious for the Fish and Wildlife Service and Kootenai Forest’s to allow sales that will so obviously harm the struggling Cabinet-Yaak grizzly population.

“These projects, and the other ones lined up right behind them, pose grave risks to wildlife populations of all kinds on the Kootenai,” Sedler said.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MORE SUITS Federal case: A salvage timber sale along the Salmon River is drawing attention from federal fisheries officials concerned about threats to salmon spawning habitat./B8