Laura Lundquist

(Missoula Current) Four organizations are preparing to challenge a logging project near Seeley Lake, saying the Forest Service is once again trying to claim that slivers of land can provide secure habitat for grizzly bears.

On Friday, Kristine Akland, Center for Biological Diversity Northern Rockies director, sent a letter on half of four organizations informing the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they have 60 days to re-evaluate their biological opinions related to the North Seeley Wildland Urban Interface - Highway 83 logging project.

If there’s no change within those 60 days, the Center for Biological Diversity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council and WildEarth Guardians will sue the agencies to force them to explain what science justifies using small clumps of land as secure habitat for grizzly bears.

A year ago, newly appointed Lolo National Forest supervisor Benjamin Johnson issued his decision to approve the North Seeley Wildland Urban Interface - Highway 83 Project, which includes almost 8,500 acres of logging, thinning and burning within a swath up to 2 miles wide along the east side of U.S. Highway 83 between Seeley Lake and Rainy Lake. Almost 700 acres will be "regeneration cuts," which are essentially clearcuts with a few trees left standing.

The project is scheduled to last 20 years, with most of the logging occurring in the first five to 10 years. Johnson said the need was “to address the existing hazardous conditions… while meeting USFS requirements to protect wildlife habitats, promote economic needs, and transportation management.”

In the letter, Akland said the project failed in the requirement to protect wildlife habitat, particularly that of the grizzly bear, in two ways: in a 2023 Lolo Forest Plan biological opinion, which set the stage for the biological opinion for the North Seeley project.

“An action agency - here, the Forest Service - cannot rely on a faulty biological opinion to fulfill its substantive (Endangered Species Act) duties to ensure it does not jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species,” Akland wrote.

The North Seeley Project includes portions of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly bear recovery area where only patches of land larger than 2,500 acres can be considered secure grizzly habitat. However, most of the Project overlaps the NCDE Zone 1, which was created as a buffer area around the recovery area where grizzly bears live and through which they travel, so it’s still important habitat.

However, in its 2023 biological opinion for the Lolo Forest Plan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated no secure habitat patch size for Zone 1. It required only that such habitat be about a third of a mile from a motorized route, “regardless of whether it occurs in a large contiguous block, a narrow strip or an isolated fragment incapable of functioning as secure habitat for grizzly bears,” Akland wrote.

In addition, the Fish and Wildlife Service provided no justification for why grizzlies would need 2,500 acres inside the NCDE but then require only an acre or less once it steps into Zone 1.

The Fish and Wildlife Service followed similar playbooks in two other national forests, and federal courts have found they violated the Endangered Species Act in both cases.

In 2025, Missoula federal district judge Donald Molloy ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service couldn’t adopt a patch size of 10 acres as secure habitat without presenting the science that shows patches that small would protect a bear, particularly a sow with cubs, for 24 hours. So Molloy nullified the Custer-Gallatin National Forest’s decision to approve the South Plateau Project until the FWS reconsidered patch size.

Then two months ago, Missoula federal district judge Dana Christensen ruled against the Bitterroot Forest and its Forest Plan amendment, saying the Fish and Wildlife Service hadn’t analyzed or justified how dropping secure habitat size to one acre would affect grizzly bears.

In the letter, Aklund said the 2023 Lolo Forest Plan biological opinion was worse than the previous two cases in that it didn’t even set a patch size, much less justify the choice.

“… (the Fish and Wildlife Service) cannot lawfully rely on a no-minimum patch size without explaining why every isolated fragment that is located a mere 500 meters from a road functions as secure habitat for grizzly bears,” Aklund wrote.

The problem with the biological opinion for the North Seeley Project is that it refers to and depends on the 2023 biological opinion. So if the 2023 opinion is flawed, then so is the project’s opinion, Aklund said.

Finally, the North Seeley Project would add 96 miles of “undetermined roads,” which are unauthorized roads, often old logging or mining roads, without a specific Forest Service purpose. The Forest Service said it would also decommission 149 miles of road, which would result in an increase in secure grizzly habitat. However, the project doesn’t identify where those roads are.

The organizations say the Forest Service should have to disclose the locations of the roads since roads negatively affect grizzlies and other wildlife. And since the Fish and Wildlife Service’s definition of secure habitat is being a third-of-a-mile away from roads, secure habitat can’t be established without knowing where roads are.

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.