A July 22 ruling will allow logging to continue on the Round Star Project located west of Whitefish, despite an ongoing lawsuit from conservation groups against the Flathead National Forest.  

Four conservation groups, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Council on Wildlife and Fish, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection and Native Ecosystems Council, filed suit in January over the Round Star logging project in the Tally Lake Ranger District, claiming that the project is ill-conceived and encroaches on lynx, grizzly and elk habitat.     

Federal Magistrate Kathleen L. DeSoto denied the preliminary injunction seeking to halt logging on the project while the lawsuit remains active. The July 22 ruling states that the “plaintiffs have not raised serious questions” and that it “is clear that FWS sufficiently addressed the likely effects of roads on grizzly bears.” 

DeSoto also noted a delay in filing – that the project was well underway and multiple timber sales had already taken place.  

“Plaintiffs do not present a satisfactory explanation for the months that elapsed between approval of the project, the initiation of this lawsuit, and the filing of Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction,” the ruling states.  

The Round Star Project area includes 28,300 acres, 78% of which is national forest land, 7% is state land and 15% is privately owned. The project is primarily (92%) in the wildland-urban interface.  

Goals for the project include wildfire fuels reduction and expanding recreational components of the Round Meadows Cross-Country Ski Area.  

Last March, loggers who had purchased Round Star Project timber sales found grievances with the lawsuit, stating that it was a deterrence to the forest management.  

“It takes years for the Forest Service to conduct an environmental assessment. It goes through a thorough process and a public review before going up for sale,” Chris Leever, of Leever & Sons, told the Pilot in March.  

“And the Forest Service checks on us to make sure we’re doing a good job and following the specifications of the contract. It’s a well thought out, well-oiled machine.”   

JUST DAYS after the July 22 ruling, the same four conservation groups filed an additional lawsuit against the Flathead National Forest against the neighboring Cyclone Bill Project. 

The 41,000-acre Cyclone Bill Project area extends southwest from Tally Lake, near Star Meadows residential areas, while the Round Star Project extends northwest from Tally Lake.  

The Cyclone Bill Project, with 56% of its area in the Wildland-Urban Interface, plans for approximately 9,192 acres of commercial timber harvest, as well as 3,139 acres of noncommercial treatments to mitigate wildfire risk by reducing tree densities and fuel loadings.   

The Cyclone Bill Project was finalized in March and plans for 11.4 miles of new roads and 2.5 miles of temporary roads. 

One of the conservation groups’ arguments against the Cyclone Bill Project is that the National Forest failed to analyze the cumulative impacts of the adjacent Round Star project.  

“Just as the project failed to account for cumulative effects from logging and road-building on state and private lands, it also failed to account for the impacts from nearby logging and road-building on National Forest lands,” Micheal Garrity, director of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, wrote.  

“For years the Tally Lake Ranger District has authorized massive logging projects, only to narrow their resource analysis to the project-level, effectively ignoring that wildlife experience impacts at a landscape level.” 

The plaintiffs also allege that the Cyclone Bill Project goes against the National Forest Plan’s connectivity guidelines, to the detriment of grizzly bears, and that that Project area targets old-growth forests, which the National Forest is required to protect. 

Details on the Forest Service’s enviromental assessment are in the project’s archive at www.fs.usda.gov/r01/flathead/projects/archive/63658.

    A Forest Service map of the Cyclone Bill environmental assessment vicinity.
  

    A detailed version of the Cyclone Bill Project. (Forest Service photo)
  

    A map of the proposed Round Star project on the Flathead National Forest west of Whitefish.