Greetings, Beacon Nation. Tristan Scott here with a Monday edition of the Daily Roundup that includes an important update on a logging project west of Whitefish that a federal judge halted in March.

The Flathead National Forest’s Tally Lake Ranger District has reaffirmed its April 2024 decision approving the Round Star Vegetation Management Project, closing out a court-ordered review that examined the logging project’s wildland-urban interface (WUI) mapping and its consideration of nearby logging projects.

In a letter dated Aug. 28, Tally Lake District Ranger Bill Mulholland wrote that no changes to the original decision are warranted and that the original decision remains valid, following release of a final revised environmental assessment (EA) and revised finding of no significant impact (FONSI).

The review stemmed from a March 31 order by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen DeSoto, who ruled that the Forest Service had violated the National Forest Management Act by failing to adequately document compliance with Lynx Amendment standards in the forest plan, and had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a “hard look” at cumulative effects from the adjacent Cyclone Bill project. DeSoto declined to vacate the project outright, instead remanding it to the Forest Service to address the deficiencies.

The lawsuit was brought in January 2025 by four conservation groups — the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, Council on Wildlife and Fish, and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection — which argued the project’s environmental review inadequately addressed impacts to Canada lynx and grizzly bears, both federally protected species.

Called the Round Star Project and first proposed in December 2021, it authorized a range of forest management actions aimed at reducing wildfire risk across the 28,300-acre project area, including commercial timber harvests on up to 6,600 acres and non-commercial vegetation treatments on up to 2,866 acres. Of the total treatment acreage, about 78% (7,359 acres) falls within the wildland-urban interface. The project includes 20 miles of new road construction and an expansion of the Round Meadow Cross-Country Ski Area. The original decision notice was signed April 3, 2024, and implementation began that spring.

In response to the federal judge’s order, the Forest Service retraced the project’s WUI using criteria set out in section (16)(B) of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, and revised its cumulative effects analysis to account for the adjacent Cyclone Bill and Rad Reid Blowdown Salvage projects. The revised EA and a draft revised FONSI were released for public comment on May 27, initiating a 30-day comment period that closed June 26.

According to Mulholland’s letter, the overall extent of the mapped WUI changed relative to the version used in the 2024 EA. However, he wrote that every treatment unit in lynx foraging habitat authorized under the 2024 decision notice still falls within the revised WUI boundary, meaning no changes to project acreage, unit locations, or road construction were required.

The Forest Service received seven comment letters during the public comment period. Four supported the project: the American Forest Resource Council, Stoltze Land and Lumber Company, the county commissioners of Mineral, Sanders, and Powell counties, and one private citizen. Three opposed it: the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection — the same three groups, along with Council on Wildlife and Fish, that brought the original lawsuit.

Mulholland’s letter states that his team reviewed all comments and made “slight updates” to the analysis, including consideration of new literature on WUI mapping, but found no basis to alter the project’s scope.

The letter states that updated Canada lynx and critical habitat analyses, which incorporated the Cyclone Bill and Rad Reid Blowdown Salvage projects, did not result in significant changes. Based on that analysis, Mulholland determined that an environmental impact statement is not required and that the project does not violate applicable federal, state, tribal, or local environmental laws.

The revised EA and supporting project record are available on the Flathead National Forest’s project webpage.