Page 10 - Flathead Beacon // 9.9.15

NEWS
Months of Negotiations Led to Grizzly Bear Protection Settlement Conservation groups pleased with proposed settlement to create grizzly security zones north of Whitefish
BY TRISTAN SCOTT OF THE BEACON
A coalition of environmental groups wouldn’t have agreed to a settlement that allows logging to occur in grizzly bear habitat near Glacier National Park if it hadn’t been a welcome windfall for the threatened species.
“If we hadn’t felt that this was going to greatly benefit grizzly bears we would have terminated the negotiations,” Arlene Montgomery of the Friends of the Wild Swan said. “It wasn’t something that we took lightly and just drew some lines on a map. We worked very hard on this.”
The State Land Board on Aug. 31 approved a proposed settlement that would create seven security zones total- ing 34 square miles within the Stillwater and Coal Creek state forests. The pro- posal would settle a lawsuit filed in 2013 by Friends of the Wild Swan, the Mon- tana Environmental Information Cen- ter and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
U.S. District Judge Don Molloy still must approve the agreement.
Under the settlement, no perma- nent roads would be built in the security zones, logging would be barred except when bears are in their dens for winter, and then only below an elevation of 6,300 feet. The state also would avoid or mini- mize helicopter flights over the zones.
The groups challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2012 approval of the state’s Habitat Conservation Plan covering 856 square miles of state trust land in western Montana. They com- plained the state’s plan weakened exist- ing protections for threatened species’ habitat within the forests, which are part of the larger Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) that is a griz- zly bear stronghold.
Judge Molloy ruled the Fish and Wild- life Service’s analysis of the state’s plan fell short of what is required by the U.S.
F. H. Stoltze land in Haskill Basin. BEACON FILE PHOTO Endangered Species Act. He ordered an
injunction last year that prevented Mon- tana from carrying out its habitat conser- vation plan in the two state forests, but allowed the plan to be implemented in other areas.
Both the FWS and the conservation groups appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which placed the parties in a mediation division; they have been in settlement negotiations since March.
When the timber projects were stalled last year, F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co.
near Columbia Falls felt the impact imme- diately. Two of the six active timber sales derailed by Molloy’s ruling belonged to Stoltze, forcing the company to take its sawmill operations offline and lay off six workers.
Paul McKenzie, resource manager at Stoltze, said the Stillwater Forest north of Whitefish is a valuable resource due to its diversity of trees and proximity to the mills.
Although McKenzie said the proposed settlement is good news in that it frees up
a timber sale hamstrung by legal delays, but may present additional obstacles in the future.
“From our perspective we would be glad to get our timber sale released so we can work on it and from that perspective the settlement is a good thing for us in the short-term,” he said. “With respect to the future it is certainly different than how grizzly bears were going to be man- aged under the original habitat plan. This allows less flexibility.”
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