Two environmental groups have filed an appeal to the Flathead National Forest's Winter Motorized Recreation plan, claiming it could harm grizzly bears.

The plan, also known as Amendment 24 to the Forest Service Plan allows snowmobiling over about 787,000 acres of the forest from Dec. 1 through March 31.

But certain sections of the Forest are open much longer. Canyon Creek groomed trails are open until April 14, the Sixmile area is open until April 30, Skyland/Challenge Creek is open until May 14 and the Lost Johnny area until May 31.

That's too long, claim the Swan View Coalition and Winter Wildlands Alliance, who announced they would file the appeal last week.The appeal makes several arguments against the extended plan. For one, they claim it could harm grizzly bears emerging from their dens. Secondly, they also claim it is in contradiction with another Forest Service Amendment, Amendment 19, which restricts roads and motorized uses in grizzly bear habitat.But Robbie Holman, vice president of the Montana Snowmobiler Association, said that the actual threat to grizzly bears is minimal."The Lost Johnny area is not a flat parking lot," he said. "There are cliffs, streams, deadfall. On the map, it's a great big area, but what can actual be touched by a snowmobile is a much smaller area."The snowmobile agreement was hashed out after the Montana Wilderness Association sued the Forest Service back in the late 1990s, claiming that it wasn't following its own plan by allowing snowmobile use in primitive areas. A federal judge agreed with MWA and the two parties, along with snowmobile interests, hashed out the current plan.

But snowmobilers on the ground didn't like it much because it took away many of their play areas, and environmental groups like the Swan View Coalition didn't like the compromise that left some areas open deep into the spring.Thus the appeal."This lack of integrity on the part of two of the settlement parties resulted in increased acreage for snowmobiling and unprecedented, extended, late-spring snowmobile seasons on some 52,000 acres, with the largest and latest areas located in the northern Swan Range," Swan View said in a prepared release.Swan View, in its appeal, wants to the Forest Service to create an "adequate" plan and to restrict snowmobile access on the Forest from Nov. 15 to March 15.It also wants to the Forest to begin monitoring sleds for racing pipes, which it claims are illegal and too noisy.Holman claims that the term "extended season" is a false idea because prior to 2001, there wasn't an official season. If there was snow in the mountains, snowmobilers could ride. "We never see grizzly bears," Holman said. "When you think about it, during that time of year [April and May] there aren't that many snowmobilers out there. Most are out looking to play golf. The probability of a few snowmobiles in those areas running into a bear in any place is pretty small. All that's going to happen is one or the other will get off the trail. The bear isn't going to die if it sees a human being."

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