Lifts ban on cutting in core grizzly bear habitat

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula has cleared the way for salvage logging to proceed this winter in "core" grizzly bear habitat.

Molloy had banned logging in the roadless core areas that fall within areas burned by wildfires during summer 2003. That temporary restraining order was issued in response to an ongoing lawsuit that challenges post-fire management projects in the Swan Mountain Range west of Hungry Horse Reservoir and in the North Fork Flathead basin.

But the Flathead National Forest filed a motion in November asking that the ban on logging be lifted during winter months, and Molloy did so in his Jan. 13 ruling.

Joe Krueger, the Flathead forest's environmental coordinator, said the initial order had the potential to set a precedent for banning all management activities, year-round, in core grizzly bear habitat. But the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service argued that scheduled helicopter logging in those areas would not adversely affect grizzly bears when they are denned during the winter months.

"Once the bears are denned up, there are no effects," Krueger said.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, led by the Swan View Coalition, did not argue to the contrary, Krueger said, but the judge took about a month to issue the ruling, which allows logging until April 1.

The latest court order will not have much effect in some areas where logs were felled prior to the ban on logging in core areas, because those logs are buried under snow and inaccessible.

But some of the timber purchasers likely will proceed with salvage activity during the next few months, Krueger said.

Pyramid Lumber of Seeley Lake potentially could haul out about 2 million board-feet in the Beta Timber Sale area west of Hungry Horse Reservoir, and on the Ball Timber sale, about 1.5 million board-feet is within core areas.

More timber is available in parts of the Wedge salvage area in the North Fork Flathead, just south of the Canadian border.

The main issues in the lawsuit have not been addressed by the court. The plaintiffs are largely challenging the Forest Service's deviation from road-density standards in the Flathead Forest Plan that are designed to improve grizzly bear habitat security. Flathead forest officials assert that provisions exist in the long-term forest plan that give them the discretion to determine that those standards cannot be met in several site-specific areas.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at [email protected].