Judge halts major logging project near Whitefish

A federal judge in Missoula has stopped a logging project on 28,000 acres of Flathead National Forest land near Whitefish, agreeing with a coalition of conservation organizations the federal government had neglected to consider risks to critical lynx habitat and consider cumulative effects of a nearby project. 

“There is one primary reason we took the U.S. Forest Service to court — and won — over the Round Star Logging Project,” Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said in a statement. “And that’s because lynx critical habitat is the worst place for clearcuts, and the surest way to drive lynx to extinction is to allow the Forest Service to continue its massive deforestation of the West.”

The Round Star Vegetation Management Project was approved in 2024 by Tally Lake District Ranger William Mulholland and would have authorized logging treatments across more than 9,000 acres, including 580 acres of clearcut. The project area includes habitat for lynx and grizzly bears, two species listed under the Endangered Species Act. 

The project would have included the construction of 18.7 miles of permanent National Forest System Roads, 3.4 miles of temporary roads, and would have included recreational improvements at the Round Meadow Trailhead. 

Last year, four conservation organizations — Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Council on Wildlife and Fish, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, and Native Ecosystems Council — filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service in federal court, with Judge Kathleen DeSoto taking up the case. 

Following oral arguments in the case last month, DeSoto issued an order on March 31 stopping the project and sending it back to the U.S. Forest Service for further analysis. 

DeSoto’s ruling agreed with the conservation coalition on two of their claims — that the Forest Service had failed to “reasonably demonstrate compliance” with federal lynx standards set out in the forest plan, and that the agency had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not considering the cumulative impact of a neighboring logging project on lynx habitat. 

The federal government had said the project complies with federal lynx standards by using a specific exemption due to the project’s location within parts of the wildland-urban interface , a designation found in community wildlife protection plans. 

Because the project takes place in the wildland-urban interface, the federal government had applied a specific exemption to much of the project as a way to comply with requirements for projects in lynx habitat. 

WUI designations apply to areas near communities at risk for wildfires, and forest management projects seeking to reduce fuels at the juncture of human development and public lands can be exempt from some vegetation thinning limitations, even if that contradicts lynx habitat conservation requirements. 

But the conservation groups argued the Forest Service did not clearly indicate where they were pulling the wildland-urban interface definition from, saying the agency’s reference to WUI boundaries were “confusing and ambiguous.”

The federal court agreed it could not reasonably determine whether the agency was complying with the forest plan and lynx habitat standards. 

The groups also alleged that a nearby logging project, known as “Cyclone Bill, Logging Project” should be considered in tandem with the Round Star project for the cumulative effects on the environment. 

The same coalition has filed a lawsuit over that project with similar complaints that it will impact lynx and grizzly bear habitat. 

DeSoto wrote the Forest Service analysis for Round Star did not include the adjacent project, despite requirements for “reasonably foreseeable projects” to be part of a cumulative analysis. 

Despite being approved after Round Star, DeSoto wrote the Cyclone Bill Project was “reasonably foreseeable,” and the omission of additional analysis is not “harmless error.”  

“Considering the adjacency of the two projects in time and space, there appears to be no question that, in some form, the cumulative effects of the two projects should have been addressed,” the order said. 

“We are thrilled the court acknowledged the sheer extent of logging on the Tally Lake Ranger District and sent the Forest Service back to the drawing board to consider the extent of its massive logging and roadbuilding apparatus in that area,” Garrity said in a statement. “

But additional claims brought by the groups — including alleged violations of the Endangered Species Act for ignoring impacts to grizzly bears and failed analysis of another nearby project for cumulative effects, were dismissed by the court.