HELENA – A proposed logging project in the Gallatin National Forest would remove too much vegetation that elk use for cover from predators, a federal appeals court ruled in blocking the project.
The U.S. Forest Service must revise the proposal to thin trees over 810 acres in the Crazy Mountains to ensure it meets the elk hiding cover requirement that is detailed in the plan for the forest, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling Wednesday.
Two environmental groups and a woman who owns a cabin in the area where the logging was to take place sued the Forest Service over the Smith Creek Project, which was meant to reduce the risk of severe wildfires that could threaten about 30 nearby homes and cabins.
The plan called for removing conifers near aspen trees to promote the growth of aspen groves in some areas, while thinning trees in other areas from densities of up to 3,000 trees per acre to between 300 and 500 trees per acre.
The lawsuit, filed in 2008, claimed the Forest Service didn’t take into account the effects the work would have on the soil and wildlife habitat.
A district court temporarily blocked the project until the Forest Service mapped the elk habitat as part of its environmental assessment, but then allowed the logging project to go ahead after determining the Forest Service had done what it had been told.
The plaintiffs appealed, and the 9th Circuit agreed with one of their claims: that the project would remove too much cover that migrating elk use to hide from predators and feel secure.
The Gallatin Forest Plan, the blueprint used to manage the forest, requires that the Forest Service maintain at least two-thirds of the cover the elk use to hide in that habitat. Elk cover is the vegetation capable of hiding 90 percent of an elk seen from 200 feet or less.
The appellate court found that the Forest Service used the wrong calculations in determining the amount of elk cover that would be removed in the project, and that the actual amount would fall below that two-thirds threshold.
The court ruled that the Forest Service violated the forest plan and ordered the agency to fix the error.