New study ordered for Cabinet-Yaak bear habitat

A plan for managing roads on the Kootenai, Idaho Panhandle and Lolo national forests to improve grizzly-bear habitat has been rejected by U.S. District Judge Donald of Missoula.

The U.S. Forest Service improperly relied on incomplete information when it adopted a road-management plan for the three forests in 2004, Molloy concluded in Wednesday's ruling.

The plan would have maintained 95 percent of an 8,500-mile road system that has degraded habitat for the imperiled Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk grizzly-bear populations, according to a press release from Earthjustice, a law firm that represented several environmental and grizzly-advocacy groups in challenging the plan.

The plan allowed for substantially higher road densities than those required in the Flathead National Forest.

"Road standards in national forests surrounding Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, both home to much larger grizzly populations, are far more stringent than the road standards that the Forest Service applied to these struggling populations," said Tim Preso, the Earthjustice lawyer who represented the plaintiffs. "That makes no sense, and we are pleased the judge sent the Forest Service back to the drawing board."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially estimates that fewer than 40 bears are in the Cabinet and Yaak recovery areas and only about 40 bears are in the Selkirk recovery area.

"There's no way these bears are going to survive those road-density standards," said Brian Peck, a spokesman for the Great Bear Foundation. "Thank heaven someone finally saw through the federal smoke and mirrors on this."

Peck said biologists for years had pointed to problems with a study conducted by Idaho state biologist Wayne Wakkinen and federal biologist Wayne Kasworm. The plan was largely based on that study, which focused on six female grizzly bears that used more heavily roaded habitats than bears did in a similar study conducted in the Flathead forest.

Critics questioned whether the Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk bears had any better habitat available other than the roaded areas that they were using.

Molloy found that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act because the agency's environmental impact statement for the road plan failed to wrestle with unanswered questions before it adopted the Wakkinen-Kasworm study as the template for grizzly-bear-habitat management.

"Given the statements of the Wakkinen authors, the misgivings of other biologists about the range of habitat choices available to the bears, and the ongoing mortality problems in these populations, there can be no reasoned choice among alternatives and no accurate prediction of the impact of the proposed action until the Forest Service has assessed the importance of the missing information," Molloy wrote.

Cami Winslow, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service, told The Associated Press that agency officials were reviewing the 65-page ruling, and that Molloy sided with the Forest Service on two other issues that were raised by the plaintiff groups.

Groups participating in the lawsuit include the Cabinet Resource Group, the Great Bear Foundation, the Idaho Conservation League, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Selkirk Conservation Alliance.

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