Judge stops salvage logging activity

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy on Monday halted salvage logging activity on burned areas of the Flathead National Forest that are considered prime grizzly bear habitat, but allowed logging to continue in other areas where there are lesser protections for grizzlies.

Though most salvage logging can continue under the Missoula judge's order, timber purchasers said the ruling will cause a rippling economic impact in western Montana.

Molloy was responding to a request for a temporary restraining order from Friends of the Wild Swan and the Swan View Coalition, two environmental groups that have sued the U.S. Forest Service with allegations that the Robert-Wedge and West Side Reservoir post-fire projects unlawfully harm grizzly bears.

Molloy's ruling on Monday focused not on the main allegations in the lawsuit, but on the potential harm helicopter logging could cause in the project

areas this summer. The groups had asked the judge to halt all logging in the post-fire project areas, but Molloy ruled that "the evidence in front of the court at this point does not tip in favor of the universal injunction sought by the plaintiffs."

Molloy said there is "no compelling reason" to stop logging in units that lie outside "core" grizzly bear habitat security areas, but he prohibited logging within core areas.

According to the attorneys representing the Flathead forest, only 43 acres within the Robert-Wedge project area and 781 acres within the West Side Reservoir project area are considered core bear habitat.

But still, the ruling will have a heavy effect on Pyramid Mountain Lumber of Seeley Lake, a mill that purchased an estimated 18 million board feet of timber in the Beta sale just west of Hungry Horse Reservoir.

"The Beta sale is admittedly a more difficult case, since a significant portion of the entire sale is within core habitat," Molloy said, adding that "core habitat serves a special purpose within the legal and ecological schemes to protect the grizzly bears and therefore activity in those units shall be halted until full hearing of those issues."

That hearing has been scheduled for July 29 at 9 a.m. in Molloy's Missoula courtroom.

Gordy Sanders, general manager at Pyramid Lumber, said the ruling has essentially stopped the company's operations within the West Side Reservoir Project Area this summer, with considerable economic ramifications.

"There will be some very serious economic impacts on small businesses resulting from this decision. And some of those impacts will likely be irreversible," he said.

While Pyramid has other active timber sales in the region, the Beta sale was its largest, Sanders said.

"For us, it was huge. We brought our inventory down in the log yard to make room for the inventory we were going to bring in from up there," he said.

Helicopters were scheduled to arrive Tuesday to remove trees that have been felled throughout the Beta sale area, Sanders said. A line skidder was delivered to the sale area last weekend.

A total of 26 businesses will be affected, with roughly 14 million board feet of timber remaining on the sale, according to a declaration filed with the court by Pyramid.

"There are a lot of small businesses that will instantly be impacted by the decision," Sanders said. "It's not just Pyramid. It's the contractors that are doing the timber falling, the skidding, the processing and the hauling."

Also, many of the logs being removed from the Beta sale area were scheduled to go to log-home manufacturers in western Montana.

Sanders said deterioration of fire-damaged logs is likely to become a growing concern under the heat of summer, considering he has no potential relief until the July 29 hearing.

Stoltze Lumber Co. in Columbia Falls will be able to proceed with logging on most of the areas where it purchased timber contracts, but the order will still have an impact on the company's operations, said Ron Buentemeier, Stoltze's logging manager.

The company's Blackfoot South sale will not be impacted because it lies entirely outside core habitat. But there are four affected logging units where logs have been felled in preparation for helicopter removal that was supposed to start this week, Buentemeier said.

"It'll be another week before we can get enough logs sawed for the helicopters to work, so we have a week's down time with the helicopters," he said.

Buentemeier said "it's hard to say" how much the ruling will impact log supplies and operations at the mill.

Molloy was briefed on the potential economic impacts of shutting down the sales through a series of declarations filed in his court by Pyramid, Stoltze, Flathead County, the Montana Logging Association, the Montana Wood Products Association and a series of independent contractors.

Those declarations were not referenced in the ruling. Molloy did refer to plaintiff declarations from Dr. Lee Metzgar, a wildlife ecologist, and from Keith Hammer, chairman of the Swan View Coalition.

Metzgar concluded that "available evidence points to a recent, continuing decline in the (Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem) grizzly bear populations," and that six grizzly bear sub-units where logging is planned "will fail to provide sufficient habitat security for the successful survival and reproduction" of female grizzly bears.

Metzgar also concluded that the salvage projects "will displace grizzlies from critical seasonal habitats and these effects can last many years into the future."

Buentemeier and Sanders dispute those conclusions.

"I think part of the question on the ground has to relate to core area that's burned," Sanders said. "The role that that core area served prior to the burn is significantly different today."

"There's very little browse and other food sources for bears in these units because they burned," said Buentemeier, who added that, through helicopter log removal, the harvest in core areas was designed to have the least impact at the highest expense.

The nature of helicopter logging, he said, is rapid and concentrated in a few logging units at one time. In several decades of working on the Flathead, Buentemeier said he has seen several instances of grizzly bears lingering close to logging operations.

"We're not affecting the bear, so give us a break," he said. "For a short period of time we're going to be there and then we're going to be gone."

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com