Case could determine fate of helicopter logging

Hungry Horse News

Loggers will again be able to salvage timber from burned areas outside "core" grizzly bear habitat, after being shut down for about a month.

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy issued a ruling that loggers, at least temporarily, couldn't salvage timber from units with core grizzly habitat.

That had Forest Service officials shutting down entire logging units because they a portion - sometimes as a little as an acre - of core grizzly habitat in them.

But Friday, Molloy clarified his ruling, saying that logging is OK outside of core habitat. It's just not allowed inside the core habitat boundaries.

While it may sound somewhat confusing, on the ground it's pretty simple - the Forest Service will go out and physically mark boundaries on salvage sales so loggers know where they can and cannot cut, said Rob Carlin, a planning staff officer with the Flathead National Forest.

The salvage sales are from timber burned from the 2003 fire season. Sales are located up the North Fork in the Robert and Wedge fires and in areas burned along the West Side of the Hungry Horse Reservoir.

Of the land mass that burned, about 8 percent - or 6,000 acres has been sold for salvage. About 800 to 1,000 acres of that salvage area are considered "core" grizzly bear habitat.

Molloy's clarification, Carlin said, would allow salvage to continue on about 5,000 acres of land, resulting in a harvest of 50 to 55 million board feet of timber.

The legal maneuvering on the timber sales comes from a lawsuit filed by the Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan, who maintain the salvage logging, among other things, violates the Endangered Species Act because it has the potential to disturb grizzly bears in their key habitat.

The two groups earlier this year filed for a preliminary injunction, but Molloy still hasn't ruled on that.

The case could ultimately come down to whether helicopter logging of an area is considered motorized use as a matter of law. The bulk of the salvage logging is helicopter logging - meaning logs are cut down by sawyers on foot, then picked up by helicopters, which fly them to trucks to be picked up and taken to mills.

The process is far less intrusive than other traditional logging means, which use ground equipment.

Forest Service rules set standards for motorized use under traditional methods of logging, but the use of helicopters hasn't been challenged up until now.

"We thought helicopter yarding was OK," said Carlin. "Especially in a burned stand … in our eyes, it's acceptable."

But ultimately, it may be up to Molloy to say whether it is or isn't.

Even if it isn't acceptable in the summertime, when bears are awake, logging has been done in core grizzly bear habitat in the past when bears are asleep in winter, Carlin noted. If this case drags on, the timber would probably just be harvested in the winter months - after Nov. 15, which is generally accepted as the denning date for grizzly bears.