Forest Service halts huge clearcutting and roadbuilding plan next to Yellowstone National Park

Grizzly bear sow and young cubs, Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Sam Parks.

Press release from WildEarth Guardians and allies is pasted below, and right here

WEST YELLOWSTONE, MONTANA— Following a challenge by multiple conservation groups, the U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday that it was halting a plan to clearcut more than 4,600 acres of native forests, log across an additional 9,000 acres and bulldoze up to 56 miles of road on lands just outside Yellowstone National Park in the Custer Gallatin National Forest.

In April, the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council challenged the South Plateau project, saying it would destroy habitat for grizzly bears, lynx, pine martens and wolverines. The logging project would have destroyed the scenery and solitude for hikers using the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, which crosses the proposed timber-sale area.

“This was another one of the Forest Service’s ‘leap first, look later’ projects where the agency asks for a blank check to figure out later where they’ll do all the clearcutting and bulldozing,” said Adam Rissien, a rewilding advocate at WildEarth Guardians. “Logging forests under the guise of reducing wildfires is not protecting homes or improving wildlife habitat, it’s just a timber sale. If the Forest Service tries to revive this scheme to clearcut native forests and bulldoze new roads in critical wildlife habitat just outside of Yellowstone, we’ll continue standing against it.”

In response to the group’s challenge, the Forest Service said it was withdrawing the South Plateau project until after it issues a new management plan for the Custer-Gallatin National Forest this summer. Then it plans to prepare a new environmental analysis of the project with “additional public involvement” to ensure the project complies with the new forest plan.

“This is a good day for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and for the grizzlies, lynx and other wildlife that call it home,” said Ted Zukoski, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Forest Service may revive this destructive project in a few months, but for now this beautiful landscape is safe from chainsaws and bulldozers.”

The project violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to disclose precisely where and when it would bulldoze roads and clearcut the forest, which made it impossible for the public to understand the project’s impacts, the groups said in their April objection. The project allowed removal of trees more than a century old, which provide wildlife habitat and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide, an essential component of addressing the climate emergency.

“The South Plateau project was in violation of the forest plan protections for old growth,” said Sara Johnson, director of Native Ecosystems Council and a former wildlife biologist for the Custer Gallatin National Forest. “The new forest plan has much weaker old-growth protections standards. That is likely why they pulled the decision — so they can resign it after the new forest plan goes into effect.”

“The Forest Service needs to drop the South Plateau project and quit clearcutting old-growth forests,” said Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “Especially clearcutting and bulldozing new logging roads in grizzly habitat on the border of Yellowstone National Park.”

11 thoughts on “Forest Service halts huge clearcutting and roadbuilding plan next to Yellowstone National Park”

  1. Questions…
    “The Forest Service’s plan calls for logging whitebark pine to help grizzly bears and whitebark pine,” said Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “But the only proven way to help whitebark pine is to plant them, not kill them by logging. This is not a proposal to help bears, but one that will destroy their habitat in Yellowstone of all places.”

    But no one logs whitebark pine for timber so … ???

    I looked for the draft EA and couldn’t find it on this site.. https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=57353
    Does anyone know where it is?

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  2. If no EA on record (really?) maybe it’s a CE. It’s getting more common these days, regardless of the project.

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  3. So the plan was to clear cut 4,600 acres, log another 9,000 acres and build 56 miles of roads. I don’t know anything about it really and should actually read their plans before I comment. But knowing the FS I am going to guess the they are doing entire watershed analysis and then trying to figure out what are the best projects to do in that area. Often when they have a sale the sale area may be a thousand acres but you are actually just operating in a small part of the sale area.
    Anyways all those acres and road building make for good headlines though I am sure they are wildly exaggerated. I don’t trust the Center for Biodiversity and I hate to see the FS future hampered from doing anything.
    If the Center for Biodiversity really wanted to do something they would stop picking on our federal lands and try and get our private land owners to think about biodiversity.

    Reply
    • “The project violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to disclose precisely where and when it would bulldoze roads and clearcut the forest, which made it impossible for the public to understand the project’s impacts, the groups said in their April objection.” Watershed ANALYSIS makes sense from both an ecological and economic perspective. Where it becomes a problem (for disclosing impacts as required by NEPA) is when they make a watershed DECISION without telling us where in the watershed activities would occur. I haven’t confirmed that is what is actually occurring here, but if it is, waiting until the forest plan is revised shouldn’t make a difference to what they have to do for site-specific project NEPA compliance.

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    • My hunch is the stats re: acres and miles of road were taken directly from USFS documents so unless the agency is “wildly exagerating” re: its plans then I doubt the conservation groups exagerated in the info they released to the public.
      “All lands” management is a buzzword in the FS these days so CBD should continue to keep track of what’s going on in federal land management so fed land is part of the “all lands” approach to biodiversity and yes, they could work with private landowners if that’s in their mission. The Nature Conservancy and some other orgs work closely with private landowners.
      I spent 10 years working for the USFS and another 20 working as a staffer for organizations that partnered w/ FS on projects. Unfortunately, it was very obvious to me that there’s a need for oversight of the FS timber sale and roads programs; IMO the CBD and other groups play a very important role in monitoring what the FS is doing and challenging the agency when needed.

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  4. This article offers a little more insight into the rationale for withdrawing the decision: “The forest’s staff was waiting for a biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding grizzly bears, lynx and whitebark pine, but that won’t come before the agency’s Revised Forest Plan is published. The delay was blamed on workload and staffing capacity issues at the USFWS.”
    https://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/forest-service-pulls-controversial-logging-project-near-yellowstone/article_5ad30e5b-c034-5aba-865c-1d9a3c846b9c.html

    That was a chronic problem with the FWS in Montana. They often negotiated priorities with the Forest Service, and maybe this one didn’t rank highly enough. Or maybe this was a factor: “Sara Johnson, director of Native Ecosystems Council and a former wildlife biologist for the Custer Gallatin National Forest, accused the Forest Service of pulling the decision because the new forest plan “has much weaker old-growth protections standards.””

    Reply

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