CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Conservation Groups Challenge Red Lodge Area Logging Project Again

Canada Lynx. Photo: USFWS.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Council on Wildlife and Fish, and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit in federal district court against the Custer/Gallatin National Forest to stop them from sacrificing habitat for lynx, grizzly bear, elk and whitebark pine trees just north of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, just north of Yellowstone National Park to subsidize the timber industry. It’s unfortunate to have to take a federal agency to court a third time over this logging project, but federal agencies have to follow the law, just like the rest of us.

The groups first sued to stop the Greater Red Lodge logging project west of Red Lodge, Montana in July 2015 and again 2021. In both cases, the Court ruled that the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act because the logging would have harmed Lynx Critical Habitat.

The project, now called Burnt Mountain, is back again and will occur at the same time in the same areas as the Red Lodge Mountain Fuels logging project.

They are effectively a single, landscape-scale logging project that the Forest Service illegally........

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