Greetings, Beacon nation! The region’s smokeless summer has afforded residents of the Flathead Valley a breath of fresh air that’s forecast to prevail as we turn the calendar to August. But we’re not out of the woods yet, so before we all exhale a collective sigh of relief, it’s worth taking an opportunity to zoom out and view the forest for the trees.

That’s what land managers with the Flathead National Forest insist they were doing more than two years ago when they began laying plans to reduce wildland fire fuels within the Tally Lake Ranger District. But four conservation groups disagreed, filing a lawsuit Monday in federal court in Missoula challenging the logging project on the grounds that it violates a host of federal environmental statutes, including the National Forest Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

It’s the second lawsuit since January that challenges the Flathead National Forest’s efforts to complete timber projects on the Tally Lake Ranger District, where foresters say management is badly needed to reduce tree densities and fuel loading. The four conservation groups responsible for both lawsuits, however, say the agency erred by not evaluating the cumulative effects of the projects or the impact that road building will have on endangered species such as grizzly bears and Canada lynx.

I’m Tristan Scott, here to guide you through the thicket of legal challenges in this Tuesday edition of the Daily Roundup.

Dubbed the Cyclone Bill Project, the project aimed to reduce tree densities and fuel loading on the wildland-urban interface (WUI) about 13 miles west of Whitefish. The project area includes more than 40,000 acres of land, with a decision in March authorizing 9,192 acres of commercial timber harvest, as well as 3,139 acres of noncommercial treatments to reduce tree densities and fuel loading within the WUI, and “contribute continued timber production and economic sustainability in local communities.” Land ownership within the project area is approximately 35% National Forest land, 30% private timber company lands, 20% other private lands, and 10% state-owned lands. All treatments will occur on 14,400 acres of National Forest land.

Due in part to its proximity to the Round Star Project, with which Cyclone Bill shares a northern border, the four environmental groups — Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Council on Wildlife and Fish, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, and Native Ecosystems Council — say the projects should have been evaluated as a whole.

“These two adjacent projects were developed in tandem, but instead of analyzing the two adjoining projects together, the Forest Service opted to issue Findings of No Significant Impacts (FONSIs) in both projects without considering the impacts from both projects, located side-by-side, issued less than a year apart.”

Because the two projects “fit together like puzzle pieces in the Salish Mountains of western Montana,” the groups argue the cumulative effects should have been analyzed, and that together the timber sales will obstruct grizzly bear connectivity between the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) and the much more vulnerable Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem (CYE) recovery zones. The plaintiffs also objects to the Cyclone Bill Project’s proposal to harvest stands of old-growth trees, which comprise 18% of the project area.

Per longstanding agency policy, the Flathead National Forest does not comment on pending litigation. However, trade groups advocating for active forest management say projects like Round Star and Cyclone Bill are more urgent than ever to reduce fuel loads and hold destructive mega-fires at bay, which is why most of the project area was identified in the 2020 Montana Forest Action Plan as a priority for fuels reduction to protect residential communities.

“Their cynical lawsuit is the latest example of how anti-forestry litigation is failing communities across the West,” Tom Partin of the American Forest Resource Council wrote in an op-ed in January in response to the Round Star litigation. “These ideological lawsuits undermine our hard-working public land managers who understand the needs of these dynamic landscapes.”

Stay tuned for more forest management news in the coming weeks as we follow these developments and more. In the meantime, let’s check out the rest of our Daily Roundup.