Conservation groups file complaint to halt Red Lodge-area logging projects

For the third time, conservation groups are filing suit to halt logging in the Red Lodge area that has been proposed by the Beartooth Ranger District as a way to “reduce the potential for high-intensity landscape-scale wildfire.”

Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council and the Council on Wildlife and Fish are asking a Butte District Court to halt the 1,386-acre Burnt Mountain and 1,822-acre Red Lodge Mountain projects. Together, the projects would include about 10 miles of temporary roads.

“The groups first sued to stop the Greater Red Lodge logging project in July 2015 and again in 2021,” Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said in a statement. “In both cases, the court ruled that the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act because the logging would have harmed Lynx Critical Habitat.”

Work is expected to begin this fall and continue for 15 years in an area that includes Red Lodge Mountain ski area, Timbercrest Girl Scout Camp and Wild Bill Lake, as well as numerous trailheads that access the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. The Burnt Mountain project is planned along Red Lodge Creek south of Luther.

Halving the gorilla

The conservationists argue the new projects are essentially the old one, known by the acronym GRLA (gorilla), split in two. By splitting the projects, Garrity said the Custer Gallatin National Forest is attempting to circumvent requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act that require an environmental analysis when projects exceed 3,000 acres.

“When the projects are properly considered as one landscape-scale project, they are 3,211 acres in size, exceeding the limit adopted by Congress for a project exempt from NEPA,” Garrity contended.

The Red Lodge Mountain project is proposed in the West Fork Rock Creek, West Red Lodge Creek, Nichols Creek, and Willow Creek near Palisades Campground.

Excluded from further review

The Red Lodge Mountain Fuels Project was approved in 2024 but work was halted due to “unforeseen” problems that arose when extending a temporary road from Nichols Creek, according to a bulletin signed by Amy Haas, Beartooth District ranger.

In response, on March 11 she withdrew the decision memo authorizing the work and refined it based on the new conditions.

On April 3, Haas signed off on both projects using a categorical exclusion to avoid further environmental analysis.

“I have found that no extraordinary circumstances to resource conditions exist that would warrant further analysis and documentation in an environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement,” Haas wrote in her finding.

Fire fears drive logging

The Forest Service pointed to the 2008 Cascade fire, which burned more than 10,000 acres in West Fork Rock Creek, as an example of what could happen if the forest, thick with pine trees, isn’t thinned.

“These conditions make it possible for another large-scale wildfire event to burn into the ski area and the community of Red Lodge,” the Forest Service wrote.

The conservation groups argue the work will clearcut more than 400 acres of mature forest that is home to federally protected Canada lynx and grizzly bears.

Tyler Abbott, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told a recent meeting of grizzly bear managers that such legal challenges, based on perceived dangers to threatened or endangered species, have been difficult for his agency to process in the wake of the Trump administration’s staff reductions combined with demands to increase timber harvests.

Montana in particular, is dealing with a lot of Forest Service litigation regarding secure habitat, said Amity Bass of the USFWS.

“There's differences in how we define that between the different ecosystems, the (Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem) and (Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem), we're getting challenged on that a lot,” Bass said.