CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Conservationists Sue the Forest Service to Stop Cooke City Deforestation Project on the Border of Yellowstone National Park

Beartooth Roadless Area, Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Cooke City area of Montana has one of the healthiest whitebark pine forests in the region. Yet now, the Forest Service wants to apply an unscientific method of logging across more than 2,000 acres of these whitebark pine forests on the northeastern border of Yellowstone National Park. Whitebark pine were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2022, but this logging project ignores legally-mandated protections for whitebark, as well as for grizzly bears and lynx – which also are listed as threatened. The project’s harms to protected species are why the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Dr. Jesse Logan, Gallatin Wildlife Association and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit this week in federal district court. Dr. Logan is a Cooke City resident and retired Forest Service entomologist whose primary research focused on whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

The Forest Service claims the project is to........

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