By Mark Moran - Producer-Editor, Contact - News
Big Sky Connection - Conservation groups say the U.S. Forest Service's Gold Butterfly logging project threatens key species habitat in the Bitterroot National Forest. The plan would log old-growth forests down to only 8 trees standing per acre of the impacted part of the Bitterroot. The Forest Service says the plan is the best way to manage old-growth trees, but the groups disagree. Comments from Mike Garrity, executive director, Alliance for the Wild Rockies.
Click on the image above for the audio. Conservation groups in Montana have sued the U.S. Forest Service for a logging project in an area of the Bitterroot National Forest that's been home to a successful wolverine den, according to Alliance for the Wild Rockies. (Adobe Stock)
Mark Moran
September 16, 2024 - Two conservation groups have filed suit in a federal court in Montana to stop a U.S. Forest Service logging project that would clear cut large stands of trees, and carve over 24 miles of new logging roads into the Bitterroot National Forest.
The Forest Service says this is the most efficient way to manage the old growth forest.
But Alliance for the Wild Rockies Executive Director Mike Garrity said the Forest Service's plan for logging on the Gold Butterfly project threatens critical habitat for a host of species, because it leaves only eight trees standing on each acre of old growth forest in the project area in the Bitterroot.
"Eight trees on an area a little bigger than a football field," said Garrity. "Nobody would call that an old-growth forest. Old-growth forests are very thick forests with big trees, younger trees, standing dead trees, and fallen over trees."
The Forest Service says based on an Environmental Impact Statement, the Gold Butterfly project is the best and most efficient way to manage old growth in the Bitterroot.
The suit awaits action in a U.S. District Court in Missoula.
Garrity said the Forest Service's logging plan to leave that part of the Bitterroot so barren threatens habitats of the pileated woodpecker, pine martin and goshawk, among others.
"There are also grizzly bears in the area," said Garrity. "There was a successful wolverine den there recently, where the wolverine produced kits. Both are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act."
The groups that filed the suit are asking the federal court to rule the project illegal.
They offer the opinions of over 3,000 people who weighed in against the project as evidence that the public doesn't want any more logging roads in old-growth forests.
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