Lawsuit claims Forest Service project will harm whitebark pine near Yellowstone

Three organizations and an individual are suing the United States Forest Service — specifically the Gardiner District of the Custer Gallatin National Forest — for a plan they say hurts the already-endangered whitebark pine tree while ignoring lynx and grizzly habitat, and relying on unproven studies.

The groups say the federal government is ignoring its rules and seems to be disregarding its own maps of protected lynx area in an effort to preserve the rare whitebark pine trees, despite admitting in its own documents that the efforts to preserve the trees could actually harm them.

The lawsuit, filed in the Billings division of the federal court system, centers on the logging and forest thinning project just north of Yellowstone National Park. A technique, called “daylight thinning,” which involves removing trees near a whitebark pine, is not backed by scientific research according to the court documents, and the organizations point out that the Forest Service admits that in the process of thinning, it could actually wind up killing some of the whitebark pine trees.

“The United States Forest Service fails to fully and fairly disclose in its biological assessment and in the environmental assessment that the effectiveness of this practice in whitebark pine stands is highly uncertain and inconsistent with the National Environmental Policy Act’s scientific integrity requirement,” the lawsuit said.

Whitebark pine is a slow growing pine tree that occurs at high elevations across the western United States and Canada. Trees can live to be more than 500 years old, and they play a roll in the life cycle of several other species, leading to it being considered a “keystone species.” However, its habitat is becoming more and more endangered as a warming climate is threatening its survival; it needs cool, high-elevation habitats.

“The United States Forest Service fails to quantify or even qualify the degree of that damage or mortality,” the lawsuit said.

Moreover, the groups say that while the Forest Service seems to be ignoring the mapped areas for the Canada lynx, it is also ignoring that whitebark pine trees serve as an important food source for the endangered grizzly bear.

The lawsuit said that the United States Forest Service has inexplicably removed more than 25% of the mapped lynx habitat to help justify the “daylight thinning.”

The lawsuit also alleges that the federal government is misrepresenting data in order to justify its position, including citing studies that have had no peer review. One of those studies said that daylight clearing is an effective tool — something the group said is not scientifically validated.

“Compounding the uncertainty of the effects on (whitebark pine) is the Forest Service’s failure to take a hard look at the anticipated damage and/or mortality to whitebark pine seedling, sapling, and mature trees, particularly by the mechanical treatments,” the lawsuit said. “U.S. Forest Service acknowledges that project activities may cause such harm, yet fails to quantify the extent of that harm and how it will affect whitebark pine recruitment.”

The United States Forest Service does not comment on pending lawsuits.

The project encompasses 19,921 acres in Park County, including the area surrounding Cooke City.

The groups are asking the court to vacate the plan or force the Forest Service to re-evaluate the environmental assessment, while halting the project from moving forward until the concerns are addressed.

The three groups that have filed the lawsuit are Gallatin Wildlife Association, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Native Ecosystems Council, as well as Jesse Logan — a 20-year-resident of Cooke City and a whitebark pine researcher.

They are being represented by attorneys Tim Bechtold and Elizabeth Forster.

“The Forest Service claims the project is to protect Cooke City from wildfire, but the plan calls for logging well beyond the wildland urban interface — which is why the vast majority of Cooke City residents who commented opposed the project,” said Mike Garrity, the executive director of  the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “If the Forest Service wants to protect Cooke City from wildfires, the agency should be helping residents ‘harden’ their homes by having non-flammable roofs and decks and trim trees next to their homes, not logging roadless areas miles away.”