Forest Service, environmentalists settle Kettle Range timber lawsuit regarding lynx

Federal officials and an environmental group have settled a lawsuit over a Kettle Range timber project’s potential impacts on Canada lynx.

The Kettle Range Conservation Group and the Colville National Forest finalized an agreement last week that ends a lawsuit over the Bulldog Project, a combination of logging and prescribed burning the agency had planned on about 13,600 acres in the Kettle Range and a nearby area known as the Wedge.

The Kettle Range Conservation Group sued over the project in 2023, arguing that it would damage important habitat for lynx, which have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 2000.

The suit raised concerns with a 2020 update to the agency’s lynx analysis units, which shrank the area protected as habitat for the snow-loving big cats.

In the settlement agreement filed last week, the Forest Service agreed to return to its previous lynx unit boundaries and to not authorize timber work within the units, both old and new.

The agency also agreed to drop logging plans in a few areas outside the lynx units and to maintain a certain level of tree canopy cover – an important feature of lynx habitat.

Tim Coleman, executive director of the Kettle Range Conservation Group, said that the settlement didn’t give his group everything it wanted, but that it is a win.

“I think it’s a good outcome,” Coleman said.

The U.S. Forest Service did not immediately return a request for comment.

Forest Service officials first signed off on the Bulldog Project in April 2022. It was originally set for about 15,000 acres in the South Fork Boulder Creek drainage in the northern portion of the Kettles in Ferry County.

Last May, the agency shrank the project area by more than 1,000 acres in response to a separate lawsuit that challenged a different project. The final decision released last year put the size of the project at 13,864 acres.

The settlement agreement signals that the agency will reduce the area affected by the work even further. It’s unclear how many acres will be included now, or when the work might take place.

But Coleman and others are hopeful the settlement will benefit the Kettle Range’s small population of Canada lynx.

Lynx thrive in forested areas with deep snow and an abundance of snowshoe hares, their primary prey. In recent years, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation have released lynx into the range.

The Forest Service’s lynx analysis units are drawn based on the home range of an individual lynx. Within those units, the agency’s forest plan sets guidelines meant to keep logging or burning projects from eliminating significant amounts of habitat.

In 2020, Forest Service officials set new boundaries for the units in the Kettle Range and in an area known as the Wedge.

The Kettle Range Conservation Group argued in its lawsuit that the change allowed the agency to make the Bulldog project larger than it should have been. It also argued that the new boundaries were approved without proper evaluation.

As part of the settlement, the Forest Service has agreed to keep the previous unit boundaries, which were set in 1995, in place until it makes a decision on setting new ones.