Grizzly bears are not to be touched. A judge has just ordered a stop to a forestry project (illegal, by the way) that intended to eliminate 10,000 acres and violated environmental laws, in addition to threatening one of the most fragile populations in the country.
The plan was to clear more than 10,000 acres inside the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, one of the last areas where the northern Rocky Mountains grizzly bears survive. And there are barely about 45 specimens left…
The project was called Knotty Pine and promoted by the U.S. Forest Service, it was declared illegal because it did not comply with several key environmental laws. The government wanted to move forward without properly studying the real impact of the logging… especially in a place where every road can mean the death of a bear.
An ecosystem at the limit
Judge Dana Christensen said that the grizzly population is falling in its last moments, and that 30% has already been lost in less than five years, so any alteration of the habitat could finish it off…
And the issue of illegal roads inside protected areas was already a major problem, because most of these bears die run over less than half a kilometer from a road, so cutting any tree to open paths could be the end of this species.
Victory for environmental organizations
Everything has been thanks to the work of several NGOs that have been fighting for years for the forests of the northern Rockies. In 2022, the Center for Biological Diversity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Yaak Valley Forest Council and WildEarth Guardians sued the Forest Service when they detected irregularities in the environmental study of the project.
By 2023 they had already achieved a temporary order to stop the work, but now they have truly won and the judge demands a complete environmental review and stops the logging until all the laws are fulfilled.
“Intact forests prevent fires better. Nature already knows how to self-regulate if we don’t interfere with it,” they said from Alliance for the Wild Rockies.
The objective?
The USFS defended the project as a forest safety measure to reduce the risk of fires, but the study ignored the presence of illegal roads, and of course forgot that animals exist in those forests. What a surprise, right?
Protecting the habitat is protecting the future
The Rocky Mountains are rivers, entire forests, and dozens of species at risk that we must protect, and we should be talking about them being protected, not the opposite.
The NGOs have taken advantage of the momentum to insist on something bigger, which is the approval of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, to shield the region against industrial expansion. It is a historic opportunity to prevent mass extinctions and to create a true ecosystem for these bears that are practically a symbol of the area.
Judicial victory and on social media
Social media has filled with comments supporting this decision. This project in Montana reminds us that environmental laws exist and must be followed just as we follow others.
“Go Bears! I agree with the folks who say clear cutting timbering is unnecessary, ruins the land for years and ultimately in the long run ends up in harvesting lumber. Two stage timbering or select cut allows trees to mature while working on the logs already dropped” said a user.
Because in the end, protecting these ecosystems is also protecting ourselves.
“People are the Earth’s parasites. We’re killing our host. But once we’re gone, give it a million years and paradise it will be again.”