The impacts of a recent court ruling pertaining to the Stillwater State Forest are beginning to take shape, starting with Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. announcing that it will curtail its sawmill operations and lay off up to 10 people by the end of September.

Production hours at the Columbia Falls-area mill will be reduced from 80 to 60 hours a week, largely because of an Aug. 21 ruling from U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in favor of a lawsuit filed Friends of the Wild Swan, Montana Environmental Information Center and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The ruling found fault with a habitat conservation plan, as it pertains to grizzly bear habitat, for the Stillwater State Forest and Coal Creek State Forest that was adopted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation in 2011. 

“It is with extreme frustration that we announce this curtailment,” Stoltze Vice President Chuck Roady said. “At a time when lumber markets are rebounding, we are faced with having to reduce production due to lack of access to the raw material. This is not a decision that has been made lightly, however we feel it is in the best interest of our employees and company to be proactive in response to continued constrained log supply in the region.”

Paul McKenzie, Stoltze’s resource manager, noted that the company has for years been sounding the alarm about the urgency to address active forest management.

“As a forester, it is disheartening to be surrounded by highly productive forests that could benefit from active management, yet still not have access to sufficient log supply to meet the production needs of our sawmill,” McKenzie said.

 Stoltze held two of six active timber sales on the Stillwater forest that are affected by the court ruling to one degree or another.

The company had about a half-million board feet left to harvest on the 1.68-million-board-foot Upper Whitefish timber sale, and McKenzie estimated about 400,000 board feet will still be harvested.

But on the Mystery Fish sale, which was expected to yield 5 million board feet, about 3.5 million board will not be harvested because of the ruling, McKenzie said.

And that’s not to mention future sales that will not go forward.

McKenzie said Stoltze relied heavily on the Stillwater forest, located north of Whitefish, because of its proximity, productivity and mixed species of timber.

Sonya Germann, forest management bureau chief for the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said the Stillwater forest accounts for about 14 million board feet, on average, of the state’s annual sustained yield target of 57.6 million board feet.

She said the ruling impacted six active sales that totaled about 12 million board feet, and it’s expected that roughly 30 to 50 percent of that volume cannot be harvested. State officials and the sale purchasers are still trying to figure out how much logging can possibly be done in the winter, which is allowed but not necessarily practical because access can be difficult.

Germann said there were planned sales totaling about 8 million to 9 million board feet that will not go forward in the current fiscal year, and an additional 8 million to 9 million board feet that was slated to be sold in the next three to five years that will not go forward.

The ruling applies to areas within the Stillwater and Coal Creek state forests that are known as the “Stillwater Core” area, which was designated in 1996 for grizzly bear habitat conservation.

Prior to the adoption of the habitat conservation plan in 2011, the core area “kind of de facto shut down those acres from any kind of management,” Germann said.

 But the 50-year habitat conservation plan included a transportation plan that applied conservation strategies that have been used in other areas, such as the Swan Valley. The plan involved opening parts of the core area to roads and active management for four years, followed by eight years of inaccessible “rest.”

The lawsuit plaintiffs maintained that approach compromised grizzly bear habitat security.

“A mother grizzly bear trying to raise young cubs needs a wild landscape, not a maze of roads with complicated seasonal closure rules,” said Timothy Preso, an attorney with Earthjustice who represented the plaintiffs. “Federal officials played fast and loose with the science claiming otherwise. Fortunately we have courts in this country that require federal officials to make rational decisions and follow the rule of law.”

Molloy found there was a lack of scientific basis for the decision to approve new road building in the Stillwater Core area. 

“The Service has not rationally justified its finding that the approach under the [HCP] constitutes a complete offset — much less a net benefit — such that additional mitigation measures did not even need to be considered,” Molloy stated in the ruling.

“Absent independent investigation into the impracticability of greater mitigation measures, the Service’s finding that the [HCP] mitigates take of grizzly bears to the maximum extent practicable is arbitrary and capricious,” he continued.

 Purchasers other than Stoltze that were impacted by the ruling were Tough Go Logging with one timber sale, Mill Creek Logging with two sales and Ureco Logging with one sale.

Established in 1912, Stoltze is in its 102nd year of operation and it is the oldest family-owned sawmill in Montana.

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