Matthew Koehler

PEER: Alaska Wastes Millions on Fruitless Lawsuits

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The following press release is from PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility). One has to wonder if any of the information and facts below concern Senator Murkowski in the least.  Also, I assume since some commenters on this site regularly rail against any and all lawsuits from environmentalists that these same commenters will take the state of Alaska to task for these fruitless lawsuits that are costing taxpayers so much money. – mk

Washington, DC — The State of Alaska is forfeiting substantial public dollars pursuing fruitless lawsuits against federal wildlife and forestry laws, according to documents posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The lawsuits highlight the lack of independent legal analysis prior to the state charging off to litigate against political windmills.

Documents obtained in public record requests filed by Rick Steiner, a retired University of Alaska professor and PEER Board member, indicate that the state’s attempt – instigated by Governor Sarah Palin, and then continued under Gov. Sean Parnell – to roll back federal protections for the polar bear cost the state budget approximately $1.5 million, the bulk of which came from retaining an outside law firm. Not only was the state utterly unsuccessful but it duplicated a suit already filed by the Alaska Oil and Gas Association and other industry groups.

Similarly, Alaska’s recently dismissed lawsuit seeking to invalidate the federal Roadless Rule governing more than 14 million acres of the Tongass and Chugach National Forests cost the state another $200,000.  These state cost numbers reflect only costs incurred by the state Attorney General. The U.S. Department of Justice likely spent comparable amounts of taxpayer funds successfully defending these state lawsuits, thus doubling the ultimate cost to public treasuries both in Alaska and the nation.

In addition, state costs are currently being calculated for Alaska losing its 2010 case seeking to conduct aerial wolf control in the federal Unimak Island wilderness, filed against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; and in losing its 2011 case to overturn the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s endangered species listing for Cook Inlet beluga whales.

“Alaska would have had more environmental impact by dumping a couple of million dollars into a pit on the Governor’s residence front lawn and setting it on fire,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that Gov. Parnell has not been shy about decrying “reckless lawsuits by environmental groups” while filing his own. “Public funds should not be used to subsidize political tantrums played out in court.”

A 2008 public records request by Steiner had revealed that the state’s own marine mammal experts agreed with the federal position that polar bears were in fact threatened due to shrinking Arctic sea ice. The Alaska legislature then appropriated $2 million to convene a “scientific” conference to gin up support for its stance against all federal ESA listings, but the conference was canceled.

Political intimidation in Alaska state service is not limited to scientists, however. In Alaska, the state Attorney General is a gubernatorial appointee. Thus, attorneys inside the state Department of Law are not in a position to exercise independent legal judgment about the soundness of arguments pressed by their employer. Gov. Parnell, a former ConocoPhillips executive, has been especially aggressive in pushing lawsuits against the federal government.

“These misguided lawsuits are making the State of Alaska into a legal laughingstock,” said Steiner, who also revealed that Gov. Parnell halted state planning for the effects of climate change. “In the polar bear listing case, the experts for the plaintiff (the State of Alaska) agreed with the experts for the defendant (the U.S.), and it was clear the state case was bound to fail,” he said. “These expensive episodes underscore the need for an independent, elected Attorney General to ensure that our state’s future legal filings are truly in the interest of citizenry of Alaska, and not simply the political interests of the current governor.”

Ironically, Sarah Palin’s Attorney General Talis J. Colberg, who filed the polar bear suit in 2008, recently expressed reservations as well about the political appointment of Attorney Generals in Alaska, writing: “I think it was a mistake to make the chief law enforcement officer of the state an at will employee of the governor…I believe Alaska would be better off with an elected attorney general.” Forty-three states now have elected Attorneys General.

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Look at state polar bear suit costs

See Tongass roadless rule suit costs

Read Talis Colberg essay

View suppressed views of state marine mammal experts

Revisit Alaska’s abandonment of climate change planning

Good fire, bad fire: the myth of the mega-blaze

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Brooks Hays, a reporter with GIMBY, recently wrote an article that should generate some interest here, especially in context of some of the comments related to recent black-backed woodpecker articles.  Below is a snip from the opening lead, which features some quotes from forest ecologist Chad Hanson.  The article also includes perspectives from Richard Hutto, forest ecologist and director of the Avian Science Center at the University of Montana, and from myself.  You can read the entire article here.

Last summer, talk of wildfires filled newspapers and dominated the headlines. Wildfires were “trending,” as they say.

Blazes were burning the western forests in record numbers, announced policy officials and reporters. Every news and science organization from USA Today to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was calling 2012’s fire season one of the worst on record.

“Records maintained by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) and NASA both indicate that 2012 was an extraordinary year for wildfires in the United States,” NOAA wrote in a year-end review.

Weather Underground co-founder Jeff Masters blamed the growing threat of wildfire on “rising temperatures and earlier snow melt due to climate change” and added that “fire suppression policies which leave more timber to burn may also be a factor.”

In August, as fire season continued to rage in most of the West, National Public Radio ran a five-part series calling mega-fires the “new normal.” This new reality was attributed to excess forest growth — an overly abundant accumulation of combustible materials – all resulting from an overzealous Forest Service that put out too many fires. NPR dubbed it the “Smokey the Bear effect.”

But a growing body of empirical data suggests these superlatives might be more storytelling than science. “Those terms, ‘mega-fire’ and ‘catastrophic fire,’ are not scientific terms,” says forest ecologist Chad Hanson, executive director of the John Muir Project. “And such hyperbolic and extreme terms are not going to lead us to an objective view of the evidence.”

An objective view of the evidence, Hanson argues, reveals that the vast majority of wildlands and forests aren’t burning hotter and faster.  They’re actually starved for high-intensity fires — fires Hanson says are more ecologically valuable than they’re given credit for.

As Hanson argues in his most recent study, The Myth of “Catastrophic” Wildfire, high-intensity fires are the exception in the U.S. today, not the norm. And he finds no correlation between increased fire-suppression activity and high-intensity fire. Hanson says the opposite is true: the longer a forest goes without fire, the more mature it becomes, the higher its canopy grows, and the less susceptible it is to fire damage.

Click here to read the entire article.

Federal Judge Tells USFS It Must Manage Snowmobile Travel on National Forests

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This is a guest post from regular commenter John Persell. -mk

Here’s the link to the Oregonian story: “Federal judge in Idaho agrees with skiers, says snowmobile excemption is arbitrary.”

The meat of the court’s decision is in the last several pages, but the intro provides good background on how travel management came about on public lands.

This is a very satisfying victory for many who have advocated for management of snowmobiles and motorized travel in general on national forests, and is the result of great work by Advocates for the West on behalf of the Winter Wildlands Alliance.  It is not clear yet whether the Forest Service will appeal to the 9th Circuit or comply with the 180-day timeframe ordered by the judge.

The judge’s straightforward decision highlights some truly head-scratching plain language twists the Forest Service attempted to use.  The case also raises questions as to why the current administration chooses to defend some of the previous administration’s actions (as here) but not others (the 2008 NFMA planning rule).

Black-backed Woodpeckers One Step Closer to ESA Protection in CA, OR, SD

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What follows is a press release from conservation groups John Muir Project, Center for Biological Diversity, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project. – mk

SAN FRANCISCO— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that it will conduct a full status review to determine whether genetically distinct populations of black-backed woodpeckers — which thrive in forests where fires have burned — will get protection under the Endangered Species Act in two regions, California/Oregon and the Black Hills of South Dakota. Today’s decision that protection may be warranted for these birds comes in response to a scientific petition submitted by four conservation groups last May. Black-backed woodpeckers are threatened by logging that destroys their post-fire habitat.

Black-backed woodpecker
Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons/Cephas. Photos are available for media use.

“This is the first time in the history of the Endangered Species Act that the government has initiated steps to protect a wildlife species that depends upon stands of fire-killed trees,” said Dr. Chad Hanson, an ecologist and black-backed woodpecker expert. “We are pleased to see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognize the naturalness and ecological importance of this post-fire habitat.”

Black-backed woodpeckers rely on what is known as “snag forest,” high-diversity habitat that’s extremely rare and ephemeral because it is only created when either fire or beetles kill the majority of trees in an area. These standing dead trees — called “snags” — then become a virtual bed and breakfast for black-backed woodpeckers by providing nesting space as well as large amounts of wood-boring beetle larvae for the woodpeckers to eat.

Post-disturbance forests are only livable for the species for a short time — roughly 7-10 years — which means the woodpeckers need newly burned or beetle-killed forests to continually appear on the landscape. Unfortunately, that habitat is often destroyed by post-disturbance logging that removes the very trees the birds rely on. Because of logging, suppression of the natural fire regime and large-scale forest “thinning” to prevent fires in backcountry areas, there is now an extremely limited amount of usable habitat available to black-backed woodpeckers.

“The black-backed woodpecker is so highly adapted to burned forests that it’s almost impossible to spot when perched on a fire-blackened tree,” said Duane Short, a zoologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “Its black back and wing feathers protect it from predators as it forages for beetles, some of which have themselves evolved in concert with burned forests.”

“These birds desperately need the lifeline of the Endangered Species Act,” said Justin Augustine with the Center for Biological Diversity. “There are likely only a few hundred pairs left in South Dakota’s Black Hills, and about a thousand pairs in Oregon and California — these birds could wink out of existence if we don’t stop razing their habitat as soon as it appears.”

With dangerously small populations of fewer than 1,000 pairs in Oregon/California and only about 400 pairs in the Black Hills, the birds depend on habitat that’s likewise extremely scarce: Just 2 percent of the forests within the woodpeckers’ range from the Cascades of Oregon through California’s Sierra Nevada are currently likely suitable for them to live in, and only about 5 percent of forests in the Black Hills are suitable. The great majority of this limited habitat is unprotected and therefore open to logging.

“Over my 22 years of field-checking proposed timber sales in eastern Oregon national forests, I have been privileged to observe black-backed woodpeckers but have increasingly noticed their scarcity as the Forest Service has been implementing ever larger timber sales aimed at artificially reducing natural fire and insect occurrence, as well as numerous post-fire logging projects eliminating black-backed woodpecker habitat,” said Karen Coulter of the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project. “This status review is a good first step toward reversing that trend”

The groups that filed the petition to protect the birds were John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, Center for Biological Diversity, Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

Missoula’s Roseburg Forest Products to pay $130k for repeated air pollution violations, mill manager fired

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Breath Deeply? The Missoula Valley has some of the worst air quality in the country. Pictured here is a view of the University and downtown area from a Stage 2 air pollution warning day in January 2013. Photo by Chad Harder.
Breath Deeply? The Missoula Valley has some of the worst air quality in the country. Pictured here is a view of the University and downtown area from a Stage 2 air pollution warning day in January 2013. Photo by Chad Harder.

People are always somewhat surprised when I tell them that the air quality in Missoula, Montana – especially during the winters months – is right up there with the worst air in the nation.  To say Missoula has a fragile ‘air-shed’ would be a significant understatement.

In fact, a 2011 American Lung Association “State of the Air” report, gave Missoula’s air quality a D grade, which doesn’t sound too great, except that the grade for the previous few years was an F.   From time to time the air gets so bad in Missoula that the Missoula City-County Health Department has to issue a Stage 2 air pollution warning, alerting the public that particulate pollution in Missoula’s air exceeds national limits.  Yep, this is basically Missoula’s ‘dirty’ secret, as Missoula ranks 59th among the 230 most-polluted American cities for short-term particle pollution.

Clearly the geography of the Missoula Valley and our wintertime weather patterns are a big reason why our air is so bad.  The valley is prone to some pretty severe inversions, which can last for weeks, and weeks.

Today, the Missoulian is reporting that Roseburg Forest Products – one of the more vocal supporters of Senator Tester’s mandated logging bill, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act – will be paying $130,925 for “numerous permit violations over the previous five years at its Missoula particleboard plant.” Here’s more information from the article:

“State officials say that in 2011 Roseburg submitted revised air pollution monitoring reports that revealed numerous permit violations over the previous five years at its Missoula particleboard plant.  Violations included improperly certifying that the company was in compliance with its air quality permit, failing to inspect equipment and not using gasoline vapor control equipment.”

Apparently, the $130,925 will go towards a wood-stove change-out program up in community of Seeley Lake, which sits an hour north of the Missoula Valley and during the winter-months may have even worse air quality than Missoula.

Finally, it should also be pointed out that while Roseburg Forest Products was repeatedly violating air pollution standards, they were also part of a $30,000 statewide newspaper ad campaign calling for more logging of our national forests by exempting many Montana timber sales from judicial review and the citizen appeal process.

UPDATE: The Missoulian is reporting that the mill manager was fired as a result of these air pollution violations.

Dead Forests Release Less Carbon Into Atmosphere Than Expected

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According to new research, lead by researchers at the University of Arizona, trees killed in the wake of mountain pine beetle infestations in Colorado have released less carbon into the atmosphere than expected.  Read about the research and hear from the scientists in this article from the University of Arizona, excerpts of which are also highlighted  below.  And High Country News wins the award for best headline of the day, “Good news for people who love bad news,” which contains even more information about the new research.  What does this new scientific research say about the validity of the oft-repeated claims from the timber industry and others that we have to cut down our forests so that we can”lock up” that carbon in 2 x 4’s?
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Massive tree die-offs release less carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, new research led by the University of Arizona suggests.  Across the world, trees are dying in increasing numbers, most likely in the wake of a climate changing toward drier and warmer conditions, scientists suspect. In western North America, outbreaks of mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have killed billions of trees from Mexico to Alaska over the last decade.

Given that large forested areas play crucial roles in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and turning it into biomass, an important question is what happens to that stored carbon when large numbers of trees die.

“The general expectation we had was that when trees die on a large scale, it would lead to a big pulse of carbon into the atmosphere through microorganisms metabolizing all that dead wood,” said David Moore, an assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and one of the lead authors of the study, which is published online in the journal Ecology Letters.

“A question we are looking to answer is, ‘How does the carbon dioxide released from the forest into the atmosphere change as you have large scale tree mortality over time?”’ said second lead author Nicole Trahan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

According to co-author Russell Monson, who is the Louise Foucar Marshall Professor in the UA School of Natural Resources and the Environment, forests affect the carbon budget of the atmosphere through two dominant processes: photosynthesis, by which plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it up in organic compounds, and respiration, by which plants and soil microbes release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The balance of these processes determines whether a particular forest is a carbon source or a carbon sink.

After a massive tree die-off, conventional wisdom has it that a forest would go from carbon sink to carbon source: Since the soil microbes are still around, they are expected to release large amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it is thought to accelerate climate change.

“Surprisingly, we couldn’t find a big pulse,” said Moore, who is also a member of the UA Institute of the Environment.

Trahan added: “In the first few years after beetles have come in and killed trees, the carbon release from the surrounding soil actually goes down.”

Large amounts of dead trees, it turns out, hold on to their carbon for a long time and prevent it from quickly being released into the soil or the atmosphere. According to Moore, this might be due to several reasons: First, while trees take up carbon dioxide during the day during photosynthesis, they release some of it at night when they switch to respiration.

“Once the trees are dead, respiration by the trees goes away,” Moore said. “In addition, if you cut off the carbon that a tree put into the soil while it was alive, you reduce the ability of the soil microbes around the roots to respire.”

“After five or six years, there is a buildup of some dead plant material, leaf litter and so on, and that seems to drive the rate of respiration up again. But it never recovers to the point it was before the beetles killed the trees, at least over the span of a decade,” Moore said.

Finally, the trees studied in this project grow at higher elevations, where cooler temperatures slow the decomposition process and thereby carbon-releasing respiration.

“Overall, we discovered that after a tree die-off, the loss of carbon in the soil results less from increased respiration by microbes but more from the fact that trees are no longer sequestering photosynthesized carbon into the soil,” Moore said. “There seems to be a dampening of the carbon cycle rather than a big pulse of carbon release. So even if the forest now goes from a sink to a source of carbon dioxide, it’s not as dramatic of an effect as we thought it would be.”

Colt Summit: Judge dings Forest Service for failure to “prepare a supplemental environmental assessment”

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The Colt Summit project area is located in the upper-center portion by the "83" and bend in the road. The surrounding area (including the portions of the Lolo National Forest, State DNRC lands and private lands) have been heavily logged and roaded, significantly compromising critical habitat for lynx, grizzly bears, bull trout and other critters.
The Colt Summit project area is located in the upper-center portion by the “83” and bend in the road. The surrounding area (including the portions of the Lolo National Forest, State DNRC lands and private lands) have been heavily logged and roaded, significantly compromising critical habitat for lynx, grizzly bears, bull trout and other critters.

The Colt Summit timber sale – and subsequent lawsuit – on the Lolo National Forest in Montana has been the source of much previous debate on this site, even though this is the first timber sale lawsuit on the Lolo NF in over 6 years.  Well, just today the next step in the legal process occurred, as US Federal District Court Judge denied the Forest Service’s motion to dissolve the injunction because the Forest Service failed to “prepare a supplemental environmental assessment,” as the court required.  Read the judge’s ruling here, or see the snips below.

The United States Forest Service moves to dissolve the injunction in light of actions that it has taken following remand. The motion is denied. The Court previously granted summary judgment in favor of the Forest Service on a host of issues, all but one. (See doc. 50.) The only fault with the Service’s analysis of the Colt Summit Project was the inadequate cumulative effects analysis for lynx. (Id.) Because of this deficiency, the Court remanded the matter to the Forest Service “so that it may prepare a supplemental environmental assessment consistent with this order and the law.” (Id. at 46.)

The summary judgment order plainly requires the Forest Service to prepare a supplemental environmental assessment (“supplemental EA”). The Service didn’t do so. Instead, it prepared what it called a “supplement to the environmental assessment.” The document is a stand alone document that is, by the Service’s own admission, not a supplemental EA within the meaning of NEPA or the NEPA regulations. See 40 C.F.R. §§ 1502.9, 1508.9–1508.10. Nor, contrary to the Service’s argument, is the “supplement to the environmental assessment” any other type of NEPA document. See 40 C.F.R. § 1508.10. Courts have previously allowed agencies to prepare non-NEPA, supplemental documents on remand, but those circumstances do not apply here….

Instead, where, as here, the Service “present[s] information and analysis that it was required, but according to the finding of the district court, failed to include in its original NEPA documents,” it must prepare a supplemental NEPA document….

Using documents not sanctioned by NEPA to “correct this type of lapse” is “inconsistent with NEPA”:

[I]f the Forest Service were permitted to correct deficiencies in an EA or an EIS by means of an SIR or another non-NEPA procedure, the regulations governing the supplementation of NEPA documents promulgated by the CEQ, as well as the Forest Service’s own rules on the issue, would be superfluous.

The Forest Service’s document does not comply with the Court’s summary judgment order or Ninth Circuit precedent.

The Service makes two arguments in response. First, it argues that the Court has previously allowed the Service to prepare a non-NEPA supplement on remand. See Native Ecosystems Council v. Kimbell, 9:5–cv–110. Be that as it may, the Court in Native Ecosystems Council expressly ordered the Service to “to supplement the EIS.” That isn’t the case here. Here, the summary judgment order expressly requires the Service to prepare a “supplemental environmental assessment.” These are two distinct requirements.

Second, the Forest Service argues that it solicited public comment for the supplement to the EA, so the document should be sufficient. Not so. Providing public comment and following some of NEPA’s other procedures doesn’t make a document a required NEPA document.

The Service’s task on remand was clear: “prepare a supplemental environmental assessment . . . .” (Doc. 50 at 46.) The Service didn’t do that. This decision has nothing to do with the quality or the adequacy of the Service’s lynx analysis. The Service might very well have produced a substantively useful cumulative effects analysis. But, regardless of the quality of the analysis, the Service has to follow the procedures required by law and this  Court’s previous order. Until the Service does so, the Court will not consider a motion to dissolve the injunction.

IT IS ORDERED that the U.S. Forest Service’s motion to dissolve the injunction (doc. 60) is DENIED. The Court will not consider a motion to dissolve the injunction until the Forest Service complies with the Court’s previous order requiring the Service to prepare a supplemental environmental assessment and comply with all the requisite procedures. (See doc. 50.)

Dated this 27th day of March 2013.

OR: Federal judge puts McKenzie Bridge timber sale on hold

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Hanging out in the Goose timber sale on the Willamette National Forest, Oregon. Photo by forester Roy Keene.
Hanging out in the Goose timber sale on the Willamette National Forest, Oregon. Photo by forester Roy Keene.

Previously, we’ve discussed and debated the Willamette National Forest’s proposed Goose timber sale, especially as it relates to the fact that many local residents in the McKenzie Bridge area of Oregon knew nothing of the Forest Service’s plans to log 7,600 logging trucks full of trees from what amounts to their neighborhood.

According to the Eugene Register Guard, a federal judge has put the McKenzie Bridge timber sale on hold, ordering the Forest Service to prepare an environmental impact statement.  At the end of the article you’ll notice that this logging project would reduce 13% of the Lookout Mountain Potential Wilderness Area, in a part of central Oregon that’s already heavily logged and roaded.  Besides, logging to reduce potential Wilderness is, like, so, late 70s/early 80s.  Hey Forest Service, get with 21st Century already.

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Forest Service cannot go forward with a controversial logging project near McKenzie Bridge until an environmental impact statement has been prepared.

People living near the 2,100-acre Goose Project had opposed strongly the logging plans. They said there had been insufficient notice about the project and that they didn’t find out about it until it was too late for them to weigh in.

Cascadia Wildlands and Ore­gon Wild, represented by the Western Environmental Law Center, filed a lawsuit last May challenging the project.

In a ruling dated Thursday and made available late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken said the timber sale could have a “potentially significant effect” on the environment. As a result, the Forest Service erred in choosing a less stringent environmental assessment, rather than a more demanding environmental impact statement, to assess the potential effects of harvesting an estimated 38 million board feet of lumber from federal land….

Aiken’s ruling will likely be embraced by McKenzie Bridge area residents who said they didn’t learn about the pending timber sale and harvest until last spring. Those residents had little recourse because they didn’t have legal standing to challenge the sale — unlike Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild, who did have such standing because they were the only parties to have appealed the project back when it was approved in 2010.

Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild said Tuesday that the ruling is a victory for local residents who will now have a much greater opportunity to be heard on the matter. That’s because an environmental impact statement requires greater public participation. “The public gets to comment, so that the decision-maker has the benefit of that information and can make a fully informed decision,” Heiken said.

Heiken said the Forest Service “had the chance to get it right a couple of times and stumbled.” The agency could have limited the proposed sale to the noncontroversial thinning of dense young timber stands, but instead opted to include the proposed logging of mature forests and logging near riparian areas, he said.

The agency again made a misstep when it decided against inviting public comment after local residents learned of the proposed sale last year, he said. “The Forest Service still had the discretion to do that and avoid this lawsuit,” he said….

Aiken said that the project would reduce the 9,664-acre Lookout Mountain Potential Wilderness Area by 1,249 acres — resulting in the harvesting of 680 acres of timberland and fragmenting an additional 569 acres from the rest of the potential wilderness area.  In addition to the number of acres logged, the project also would authorize the construction of eight miles of temporary roads and one mile of permanent road, the judge noted.

Here is the press release from the plaintiffs.

Lawsuit alleges MT FWP allowing trapping in occupied lynx habitat in violation of ESA

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lynx_trapped_PhotoThis is a follow-up post to a few previous posts we had on the blog regarding Canada Lynx, including the fact that the US Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t produced a recovery plan for Canada lynx, even though the species was listed as “threatened” 13 years ago.  What follows is the press release from the conservation organizations, which filed the lawsuit. – mk
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Helena, MT.  Three conservation organizations today sued the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission and the agency’s director for permitting trapping that kills and injures Canada lynx, a species protected as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The state permits trapping and snaring in lynx habitat, even though the Act prohibits harm to protected species. At least nine Montana lynx have been captured in traps set for other species in Montana since the species was listed in March 2000, and four are known to have died from trapping.

“In one instance, a young female lynx was found in a pool of her own blood, with extensive muscle damage, and an empty stomach – all from lingering far too long in a cruel, steel-jawed trap,” stated Wendy Keefover, Carnivore Protection Program Director for WildEarth Guardians, “Montana allowed this unnecessary death, which impedes lynx recovery, especially when it involves potential breeding animals.”

Population estimates for lynx in Montana are unknown. The best available science estimates that no more than 300 lynx inhabit Montana and that the population is declining from both indirect and direct threats such cutting the forests in their habitats, human encroachment, global warming, and mortalities from poaching and trapping.

Lynx are particularly vulnerable to traps and snares set for other species, such as bobcats, coyotes, foxes, and wolverines, and are potentially vulnerable to wolf traps. Lynx are easily captured as they are naïve about human scents, respond well to baits, and are easily attracted to visual lures.

Though lynx trapping is banned since the animal is protected under the ESA, Montana allows regulated trapping of a number of other species throughout the year. The conservation groups allege that trapping and snaring in occupied lynx habitat is illegal because the Endangered Species Act mandates that states prevent the “take” of “threatened” lynx.

Even Canada lynx that survive being captured in body-gripping traps endure physiological and psychological trauma, dehydration, and exposure as well as injuries to bone and tissue that reduces their fitness and chances for persistence. Trapping is also a source of indirect mortality to lynx kits since adults harmed or killed by traps and snares cannot adequately feed and nurture their young.

“Crippled or dead lynx can’t take care of their young,” said Mike Garrity, Executive Director of Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “If we want to get lynx off the Endangered Species list, we need species’ recovery, not more mortalities and mutilations.”

“Baited traps lure lynx to injury and death,” said Arlene Montgomery, Program Director for Friends of the Wild Swan. “Montana has a responsibility to ensure that imperiled species are not harmed by trapping. Our goal is to make sure that the State does just that.”

The groups are represented by attorneys Matt Bishop and Greg Costello of Western Environmental Law Center, and Melissa Hailey of W. Randolph Barnhart, P.C.