The Daily Inter Lake

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday issued a new opinion concluding that a mine under the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness and $18 million in mitigation measures are more likely to help rather than hurt imperiled grizzly bears.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula ruled in March 2005 that a previous biological opinion was "arbitrary and capricious" in concluding that the Rock Creek copper and silver mine would not jeopardize the few grizzly bears remaining in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem. He also faulted the agency for failing to consider the cumulative effects of this and other projects on the Rock Creek bull trout population.

For the last 18 months, the federal agency has been developing the 600-page opinion.

"We carefully reviewed our analysis and how we presented our analysis," said Anne Vandehey, the agency biologist who led development of the new opinion. "In this opinion, we did our very best to document how we arrived at our decisions."

Vandehey said the opinion concludes that the collective mitigation measures "will ultimately improve conditions for bears in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem …. We don't believe any other grizzly bear ecosystem has received this level of concerted or focused attention."

Officials with Revett Minerals Inc., the company that's pursuing the mine development, were predictably pleased with the opinion, while mine opponents were not.

"It's a major milestone to get the new biological opinion issued," said Carson Rife, Revett's vice president of operations.

"We are delighted to receive this favorable report from the USFWS which forcefully reconfirms … the Rock Creek Project is a benefit to the grizzly bear population and the accompanying mitigation efforts will actually assist the recovery of the bears in this region of Montana."

"It's scientific and legal nonsense," said Brian Peck, a grizzly recovery specialist for the Great Bear Foundation. "You put a mine in at the narrowest point of the ecosystem, what's the likelihood that's going to improve things for grizzly bears? Zip. Zero. Nada."

Fish and Wildlife Service officials cite Revett-funded measures to reduce conflicts between bears and humans not only near the mine, but throughout the Cabinet and Yaak portions of the grizzly bear recovery area.

Two grizzly bear management specialists would be hired, one to be based in the Noxon area, near the mine, and the other in Libby, to work with bears in the Yaak; there would be public information and education programs; an enforcement officer would be hired, and a food-storage order would be enforced.

Through a phased approach, the company would acquire 2,450 acres of privately owned grizzly bear habitat and secure it with conservation easements.

There are requirements to reduce sediments from reaching Rock Creek, a tributary of the Clark Fork River, from the mine's main access road, a route that already is open to vehicles.

And Revett must pay for a continuous monitoring program for grizzly bears in the Cabinet Mountains through the use of radio collars.

Vandehey said most environmental impacts are expected to occur when the mining facility is under construction, and that much of the increased risk to grizzly bears will result from additional human activity associated with the mine.

Peck said those are serious impacts for a population that the Fish and Wildlife Service officially estimates to be less than 15 bears in the Cabinets. A total of fewer than 40 bears are estimated to live in the entire Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem.

Peck predicts the bear-management specialists will mostly react to problems that result from the mine, and that the habitat acquisition doesn't really make up for the habitat that will be lost.

"Bears are already using that habitat," he said. "What they are saying is that they are going to buy it so it doesn't get trashed in the future."

And Peck says monitoring doesn't do anything practical to protect bears.

"Monitoring the sinking rate of the Titanic doesn't do anything, and that's exactly what they are going to do - monitor the sinking of the Cabinet-Yaak population."

Vandehey noted that the population will be bolstered before construction gets under way. Revett cannot begin construction until six female grizzly bears have moved into the Cabinets through an augmentation program that's being carried out by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. A young female bear was moved to the Cabinets from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem last fall, and another this summer.

Rife said Revett hopes to start work in the Rock Creek drainage next spring, drilling an exploratory tunnel below the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness. That work will take about two years, resulting in a feasibility study to determine whether construction should proceed.

Building a mine will take another two to three years, he said. Once operational, the mine would process about 10,000 tons of rock and ore per day. It would discharge about 2,300 gallons of wastewater per minute into a two-stage processing plant. Processed water would be discharged into Rock Creek.

That translates to flows of about 5 cubic feet per second going into the Clark Fork River, which has average flows of 20,000 cfs, according to Rife.

"That's about a 4,000-to-one ratio," he said.

Last year's court ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Rock Creek Alliance and several other groups.

Molloy concluded that the Cabinet grizzly population appeared to be declining, and that the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to justify its positions in a biological opinion that was issued for the mine in 2003.

"He asked us to take another look at how we could justify that," Vandehey said.

"He did not feel our description of displacement effects was adequate enough, so we went back with this opinion and took a really hard look at that," she said.

The new opinion finds that bears will be displaced by the mine, the access road and associated activity at both, but there will be adequate alternative habitat, Vandehey said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com