Federal Court Vacates Forest Service Decision and Halts Massive Yellowstone Ecosystem Logging Projec

It’s absolutely one of the worst places in the country for clearcuts. So we’re thrilled that the Court agreed with us and halted the logging project. But going even further, the Court’s Order vacated the Forest Service’s approval of this logging and road-building project that would have clearcut federally-designated lynx Critical Habitat in the Beartooth Mountains, which are part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem just west of Red Lodge, Montana and north of Yellowstone National Park.

We first sued to stop the Greater Red Lodge logging project in July 2015 and the Forest Service withdrew the decision authorizing the logging in November 2016 after a federal district court granted our request for an injunction. The Court found the Forest Service had violated the law by not consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service on the potential impacts to federally-designated lynx Critical Habitat. But then the Forest Service plowed on and signed a new decision, so we challenged it in court again in July 2021.

The Forest Service wanted to sacrifice lynx, grizzly bear, and elk habitat to subsidize the timber industry at a cost of $588,000 federal taxpayer dollars. We tried to work with the Forest Service on this, but the agency stubbornly refused to acknowledge the best available science or the law and instead arbitrarily side-stepped the public, changed definitions, and tried to remap federally-designated lynx habitat to get around legally-mandated habitat protection requirements.

The Greater Red Lodge Timber Sale is in the Custer-Gallatin National Forest, directly adjacent to the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area and two designated Inventoried Roadless Areas: Burnt Montana and Red Lodge Creek-Hellroaring. As proposed, the project would have built and rebuilt 19 miles of logging roads – some of which are currently trails — to commercially log 1,051 acres over a period of five to ten years. The project also included clearcutting over 500 acres of mature forests in federally-designated lynx critical habitat and grizzly bear habitat despite both species being listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/08/24/federal-court-vacates-forest-service-decision-and-halts-massive-yellowstone-ecosystem-logging-project/