<
https://flatheadbeacon.com/2023/08/18/citing-climate-impacts-and-grizzly-bear-mortality-judge-halts-yaak-logging-project/>
"Pointing to evidence that land managers failed to adequately consider the
impacts of a 95,000-acre logging project both to global climate change and an
isolated population of grizzly bears in northwest Montana, a federal judge on
Thursday halted the Black Ram logging project in the Yaak Valley north of Troy.
The sprawling logging project has been beset by controversy since it was first
proposed in July 2018, with high-profile conservation figures, including the
author Rick Bass, arguing it shouldn’t move forward because it lacks effective
safeguards to protect the region’s fragile grizzly population in the
Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, which includes a federally designated grizzly bear
recovery zone. Conservation groups also argued the agencies overseeing the
project didn’t consider the climate harm that would result from logging
thousands of acres of old-growth forest, including clearcutting.
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) first proposed the project in 2017. In June 2022
the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Native Ecosystems Council formally
challenged it, filing their lawsuit in federal court in Missoula. The lawsuit
names as defendants Keith Lannom, deputy regional forester for the USFS’
northern region; Chad Benson, the forest supervisor for the Kootenai National
Forest; and Kirsten Kaiser, district ranger on the Three Rivers Ranger District
of the Kootenai National Forest. The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho later joined the
lawsuit as defendant-intervenors.
In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Donald W. Molloy found that the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) ignored population declines in the Cabinet-Yaak
population of grizzlies, and that the USFS failed to address harms to grizzlies
from illegal use of motorized vehicles. The court also found that the Forest
Service failed to consider the climate harms of logging thousands of acres of
forest that currently store carbon, in violation of the National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA)."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-school-meals-transit-us-ecuador-conservation/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
