FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Kettle Range Conservation Group and The Lands Council Settle Lawsuit with the Forest Service to Force Increased Protection for Caribou and Grizzly Bears
March 30, 2001
CONTACTS: Marc Fink, Western Environmental Law Center (541) 485-2471
Mike Petersen, The Lands Council (509) 838-4912
Tim Coleman, Kettle Range Conservation Group (509) 775-2667
PORTLAND –Federal Judge Robert Jones has approved an agreement reached between The Lands Council (TLC) and Kettle Range Conservation Group (KRCG) and the U.S. Forest Service, settling a lawsuit over endangered grizzly bears and woodland caribou in northeastern Washington. The lawsuit was filed in May, 2000, alleging that the Colville National Forest violated the Endangered Species Act when it failed to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to prepare an updated biological opinion for the two endangered species.
The existing biological opinion for the Colville National Forest, written in 1988, devotes only a few sentences to the critically endangered species. The conservation groups pushed for consultation to be reinitiated because the old opinion fails to include an “incidental take statement” to regulate incidental harm to the species, and because significant new science has been developed since 1988 to address the habitat needs of the species. The latest science has confirmed the need for large blocks of unroaded habitat, which the conservation community has been demanding for years.
“Despite a woefully inadequate biological opinion, the Forest Service was charging ahead with more road building and logging in caribou and grizzly habitat,” said Marc Fink of the Western Environmental Law Center, the attorney on the case for the conservation groups. “Unfortunately, litigation was again necessary to force the Forest Service to do the right thing and consult with the expert scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service.”
“As the habitat of caribou and grizzly has been logged and roaded, these species have been pushed to the brink of extinction,” stated Tim Coleman, executive director of Kettle Range Conservation Group. “Unfortunately, this perilous situation has not spurred action by federal land managers to protect or restore wildlands essential to the survival of the species. We are optimistic that biological analyses the Forest Service has agreed to complete will result in a greater level of protection for woodland caribou and grizzly bears.”
“We are hopeful that consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service will result in greater protection for these endangered species and lead to a scientific plan to recover the populations of grizzly and caribou on the Colville National Forest. The Selkirk caribou herd is down to 34 animals, and at least some of that decline is due to illegal takings, as well as habitat degradation that is allowed under the existing Colville Forest Plan”, stated Mike Petersen, Conservation Director at The Lands Council.
Pursuant to the settlement, the Colville National Forest will complete the new biological opinion before proceeding with two timber sales that are planned for areas that are occupied by grizzly bears – the Z Slumber and the Sheep Creek projects. The settlement also stipulates that the Colville National Forest will attempt, in good faith, to complete the forest-wide biological opinion before issuing a decision on a controversial road access project into caribou and grizzly habitat that Stimson Lumber Company is currently seeking.
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Craig: A decision was just re-released on this project. We expect to appeal and potentially litigate. This project is in the LeClerc Creek watershed which is south of the Salmo-Priest but is a Grizzly Bear/Caribou Management Unit.
Tim
August 26, 1997
For more information call:
Tim Coleman, Kettle Range Conservation Group, 509-775-2667
Mike Petersen, Inland Empire Public Lands Council, 509-775-2590
Tom Skeele, Predator Project, 408-587-3178
Mark Sprengel, 208-448-2971, Pend Oreille Environmental Team
PRESS ADVISORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SWEETHEART ROAD DEAL THREATENS GRIZZLY BEARS
Metaline Falls, WA. Northeast Washington’s Colville National Forest is proposing a “cost share” road building project with Stimson Lumber which will degrade grizzly bear, caribou, bull trout, lynx habitats and old growth forests. Under the proposed agreement, 59 miles of roads would be built, including a portion through national forest lands, to access railroad grant lands owned by Stimson, formerly Plum Creek/Burlington Northern land. The roads will transect portions of the LeClerc Grizzly Bear Management Unit. “This road will result in dead bears, dead caribou and more mudslides,” said Mark Sprengel, a forest conservationist working on the project. “Forest Service personnel admit the project will degrade bear and caribou habitat, but Stimson has brow-beat them into complying with their demands to provide access,” Sprengel said
Conservationists are not happy with this proposal for two reasons: they say it’s bad both economically and ecologically. Under provisions of Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act (ANILCA) taxpayers will subsidize this project. ANILCA was created during the waning months of the Carter Administration to provide access through national parks in Alaska. The law
states the Secretary of Agriculture “may proscribe such access to nonfederally owned land within the boundaries of the National Forest System as the Secretary deems adequate to secure to the reasonable use and enjoyment thereof: provided, that such owner comply with rules and
regulations applicable to ingress and egress to or from the National Forest System.”
“Attempts to slip this project through under the protection of ANILCA are irresponsible and illegal,” said Tim Coleman, director of Kettle Range Conservation Group. “ANILCA does not mandate cost share road projects. Nor does it mandate multiple, profitable, convenient or total access to inholdings. Especially when that access violates the law.” said Coleman.
Coleman’s assertion that the project would violate the law revolves around the fact that additional roads in the LeClerc GBMU, which contains some of the best grizzly bear and bull trout habitat in northeast Washington, would further threaten both the grizzly bear and bull trout.
In a letter to the Colville National Forest, conservationists stated that the cumulative impacts of the projected 59 miles of road construction, including increased public access, increased likelihood of mudslides, logging of old growth forest in a protected area, the spread of noxious weeds, and loss of habitat for the threatened and endangered species grizzly bear, wolf and caribou as well as sensitive species such as bull trout, are a disaster in the making.
They also cite a a field inventory of the number of roads conducted two years ago on the LeClerc GBMU by the Bozeman, Montana-based Predator Project. Predator Project’s “road scholars” found over thirty seven miles of uninventoried, or “ghost,” roads on the wildlife management unit. According to Predator Project’s data, these additional roads meant that the total miles of open roads on the wildlife management unit exceeded the Colville National Forests’s own standards. Predator Project’s executive director, Tom Skeele, said that “until the Forest can prove it is adequately inventorying and monitoring their existing roads network, it makes no sense, ecologically or economically, for the Forest to build even more roads at the taxpayers expense.”
Conservation groups are also concerned because the proposed agreement between Stimson and the Forest Service essentially obligates Stimson to little more than toeing the line. “At any time Stimson can walk away from the project without risk of liability, said Coleman. “Seemingly lost from consideration by the Forest Service are land trades or outright purchases of Stimson lands in grizzly bear and caribou management areas. Recent land swaps of old growth forest by the Bureau of Land Management provide a perfect example of lands that could be traded for such important wildlife habitat, but were never considered.”
“In this last remaining stronghold of the grizzly bear, caribou and bull trout in northeast Washington, you would think the Forest Service would do everything humanly possible to protect the bear,” said Sprengel. “But alas, it is the timber corporation that gets the help, not the wildlife in need of protection.”
