Critics weigh in on critical habitat plan

A proposed critical habitat designation for lynx drew harsh criticism from all angles at a hearing Tuesday in Kalispell.

Conservationists blasted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal as being entirely inadequate because it does not include U.S. Forest Service lands, while others were highly suspicious of the designation's focus on private land and its potential to become a legal hammer for future environmental litigation.

Critical habitat, for lynx and other listed species, has been the dominant source of Endangered Species Act litigation in recent years.

The lynx proposal was prompted by a lawsuit and court ruling ordering the Fish and Wildlife Service to designate critical habitat. In November, the service proposed the designation of 29,935 square miles of land in Northern Maine, northeastern Minnesota, the northern Rocky Mountains and parts of northern and central Washington.

Nationwide, the proposal applies to 13,098 square miles of private land, 10,918 square miles of federal land, 2,643 square miles of state land and 160 square miles of tribal land.

In Montana, the proposed designation would mostly apply to Glacier National Park and about 1,691 square miles of private land, and it would exclude all U.S. Forest Service lands.

That exclusion drew harsh criticism from environmentalists at the hearing attended by about 50 people, roughly a dozen of them biologists or other officials representing government agencies.

"The exclusion of the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the entire Greater Salmon-Selway ecosystem, most of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, and the Colorado reintroduction areas renders the proposal as little more than Fish and Wildlife Service paper shuffling, with no basis in reality for real lynx recovery," said Brian Peck of Columbia Falls.

Keith Hammer, chairman of the Swan View Coalition, said the exclusion has "the stench of being an intentional way of raising public controversy" by applying mostly to private lands while "excusing" the Forest Service from any responsibilities that come with critical habitat designations.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials insist that Forest Service lands were excluded because they have for several years been managed under a Lynx Conservation Strategy through a formal agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Glacier Park is included in the designation because the park does not have that formal agreement.

Peck and others said the Forest Service agreement does not ensure "adequate protection" for lynx. He said the Fish and Wildlife Service should be setting standards rather than being a "passive observer waiting to see if the Forest Service finally gets it right."

Lori Nordstrom, the biologist who has coordinated the service's critical habitat designation, repeated the service's long-held position that expensive critical habitat designations are not expected to provide "much additional benefit" to a species.

David Gaillard of the Bozeman-based Predator Conservation Alliance predicted that the blatant exclusion of lands most important to lynx will cause more expense and litigation.

Despite complaints about Forest Service lands being excluded, Nordstrom indicated that the proposed designations would not be expanded because that would require the entire process to start over. More likely, she said, lands included as critical habitat will be reduced as a result of public comment by the time a final designation comes out Nov. 1.

"We'll probably remove more areas from the critical habitat proposal," she said.

But in Montana, the designation would still mostly apply to private lands.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials say there would be minimal impacts on private landowners. Land management activities would require a Fish and Wildlife Service consultation for potential impacts to lynx only in cases where landowners have to get federal permits or federal funding for what they are doing.

But several people at the hearing expressed suspicion of the so-called federal "nexus" requirement.

Bruce Vincent of the Libby-based Communities for A Great Northwest said he finds it "startling" that the government is suggesting there will be no effect from the designations.

"We have a history that teaches us to be skeptical of those kinds of claims," he said.

Vincent pulled out a question-and-answer sheet on grizzly bears that was distributed around 1990 that made similar claims of benign impacts. A couple of years later, the timber harvest on the Kootenai National Forest had decreased by 30 percent as a result of changing habitat needs for grizzly bears, and more recently, the forest has significantly reduced road access on the forest for similar purposes.

He said government officials probably have no intention of impacting private landowners, but what counts on private or public lands are the intentions of environmental litigants.

"We have to take a look at the overall picture of where these litigants want us to go," he said.

Julia Altemus, resource specialist for the Montana Logging Association, said critical habitat designations will translate to "one more layer of impediment to active management" of forest lands.

Dave Skinner, a member of Montanans for Multiple Use, said the lynx critical habitat designations present huge potential for future litigation over land management practices. He speculates that Forest Service lands have been excluded to reduce the federal government's legal exposure.

At the same time, Skinner said the environmental community's aggressive pursuit of critical habitat designations is strategic.

"What you are looking for is a species that is going to be a problem for as long as possible," he said. And with lynx, little is known about them, they range over wide areas and diverse habitat, and they are naturally dispersed and difficult to detect or count. Those factors will add up to vague or unattainable recovery goals and constant pressures on land managers to accommodate lynx, Skinner said.

"All these things are driven toward the ability to control land-use policy through a surrogate species," he said. "There's a real strategic goal behind it."

Others challenged the notion that massive critical habitat designation will have practical benefits for lynx.

Lorin Hicks, director of Plum Creek Timber Company's fish and wildlife program, said the company has pursued collaborative lynx research with the Fish and Wildlife Service that have shown lynx use nearly all types of forest habitat, ranging from regenerating clearcuts for hunting snowshoe hares to old-growth timber for denning habitat. While the service proposes critical habitat on lands above 4,000 feet, the research has shown the big-pawed forest cat uses habitat below that elevation.

"They are very much using everything," he said, expressing doubts about the practical benefits of "drawing a line around it and calling it critical habitat."

The proposed designation includes 8.3 million acres of Plum Creek lands, he said, most of it in northern Maine but about 413,000 acres in Montana.

While Hicks did not say that Plum Creek would oppose the designation, it was clear that the company's leadership will raise concerns about it.

He said the company would submit formal comments along with an analysis detailing the expected economic impacts.

Ron Buentemeier, vice president of Stoltze Land & Lumber Co., estimated that about a third of the company's 36,000 acres in Western Montana is included in the proposed designation.

Buentemeier said the service has yet to make detailed maps available, but from the rough maps he has seen, it appears that the designation includes large swaths of land west of Kalispell that are mostly dry, Ponderosa forests that have interspersed housing developments.

Public comment on the proposed designation will be accepted through Feb. 7, and the service plans to develop an economic analysis over the summer, with a final designation due by court order on Nov. 1.

More information on the proposed designation is available on the Internet at:

http://mountain-prairie.fws.gov/species/mammals/lynx

Written comments may be sent to: Lynx, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-Montana Field Office, 100 N. Park Ave., Suite 320, Helena, MT, 59601.

E-mailed comments may be sent to: FW6_Lynx@fws.gov