Alliance Stops Secret Plans to Clearcut Yellowstone’s Western Flank  

Steve Kelly

 January 13, 2026

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Gallatin Range. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The U.S. Forest Service and logging companies are frantically attempting to privatize public forests.

Know Your Enemy

Their multiple political and psychological tactics include:

1) Prohibit meaningful public participation,

2) limit full public disclosure of adverse ecological effects,

3) gaslight and push false narratives (propaganda), and

4) deny constitutionally protected rights to judicial review of massive, destructive clearcutting and roadbuilding programs and projects that continue to plunder, fragment and domesticate our wild, public national forests.

A growing number of people are fighting back against deregulation, deforestation and desertification.  Clearly, the federal government’s reaction grows increasingly secretive and paranoid – and hyper-violent against Nature’s many gifts.

Government “yes men” posing as forest experts spew perennial lies as a sign of their unwavering servitude and loyalty to America’s feudal oligarchy. These useful tools have long suffered from mental disorders best characterized as systematized delusions of pretentious grandiosity and infallibility.

Even diehard timber beasts are sensing the socio-political shift away from unregulated fascist expropriation toward greater freedom and liberty for all living organisms and the ecosystems upon which all sentient beings depend. The ‘old guard’ should be frightened.

Another One Bites the Dust

Fortunately, in Missoula, Montana, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy delivered a glimmer of hope and welcome relief as we enter 2026, by ruling against the Custer-Gallatin National Forest’s massive clearcut logging project.

For now, peace and solitude are restored to this incredibly valuable wildlife connecting corridor in the rugged backcountry between the Continental Divide and Yellowstone National Park.

Many thanks go out to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Native Ecosystems Council, Council for Wildlife and Fish, WildEarth Guardians, and lawyers at Western Environmental Law Center and Center for Biological Diversity  for standing up – and winning – against this gathering collaborative assault by faux-green groups, government “experts” and industry “sawdust merchants.”

Successfully defending essential wildlife and fisheries habitat in the Yellowstone Ecosystem is a huge victory for grizzly bears, wild buffalo, native trout, wolverine, lynx, moose, deer, migratory and local birds, and other wildlife.

The Court shut down the 40,000-acre “South Plateau Landscape Area Treatment Project,” designed and approved by the U.S. Forest Service and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Sun Mountain Lumber, with mills operating in Deer Lodge and Livingston, Montana, purchased the “stumpage” (trees standing on the stump). Although 16,500 acres of primarily lodgepole forest would be killed, and 56 miles of new logging roads would be bulldozed (permanent linear clearcuts), the feds declared there would be “no significant impact” on the Yellowstone Ecosystem, or any wildlife species inhabiting the semi-arid project area.

What the Court discovered to be beyond belief was the fact that no details could be found in the record disclosing on a map, or anywhere in the hundreds of pages of vague, double-talk, as to the precise time or location of where death and destruction would occur.

Promoting their ‘Big, Secret Lies’ in Court, lawyers for the Defendants (neo-colonialist USFS-USDA plantation managers and their lackies) yammered on and on about how clearcuts would increase “resilience,” promote “forest health” and reduce wildfire risk – whatever that is supposed to mean.

Clearcutting mature lodgepole pine forests in these remote, undeveloped landscapes is a crime against Nature.  Lodgepole pine is a dominant forest habitat type in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which has evolved for millennia with stand-replacing fires.  Clearcuts often cause deforestation and desertification in similar harsh conditions.

Judge Molloy wisely halted the Forest Service’s logging plans, ruling that vague, undisclosed moving targets fail to meet the legal standards required by the Endangered Species Act when critical habitat occupied by wolverine, grizzlies and lynx is threatened.

Stayin’ Alive

If the government doesn’t obey the law, why should anyone else?

People must unite, stand together, and fight this gang of imperial outlaws trying to seize public forests.  Small cash contributions are the lifeblood of grassroots, public interest organizations like the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and CounterPunch.

Each one of us must understand that ecological devastation is foundational to our collective descent deeper and deeper into American Dystopia.  I respect and honor the resistance and courage of Renee Goodman, Palestinians, and many, many others, and endangered wildlife as we fight individually, and in small groups, against the tyranny of American Empire. It’s now, or never.

Steve Kelly is a an artist and environmental activist. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.  

Conservation Groups Stop Illegal Logging Next to Yellowstone National Park

Mike Garrity

 December 15, 2025

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Wolf, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

For grizzly bears, wolves, lynx, wolverine, and bison there is no “boundary” around Yellowstone National Park. The forests in this area — the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — extend beyond Yellowstone Park’s boundaries and provide critical habitat for threatened and endangered species.  Unfortunately, some of these areas are National Forests open to commercial logging and road construction.

Despite the immense value that these public lands have for wildlife, the government recently approved a large-scale clearcutting and road-building operation right next to Yellowstone Park, which was called the South Plateau Project.  In response, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Center for Biological Diversity, Western Environmental Law Center, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council for Wildlife and Fish took the agency to court — and we won!  Because of our hard work and determination, we now have a federal court order prohibiting this illegal logging from moving forward.

In the case, the federal court found in part that the agency was breaking federal environmental laws because the agency refused to provide details on precisely where and when it would bulldoze in 56.8 miles of new logging roads to clearcut 16,462 acres (26 square miles) of National Forest. The court found that the Forest Service’s decision violated the National Environmental Policy Act because the agency failed to provide enough information to consider the potential impacts of the roads and logging on species such as grizzlies before the action takes place, as the “look before you leap” law requires.

The court also found the project violated the National Forest Management Act.  Since the agency refused to specify where the project activities would occur, it was impossible to tell if the project complied with mandatory habitat protections from the agency’s own governing land management plan, known as a “forest plan.”  These mandatory protections are in place to ensure that the agency appropriately balances the private profit interests of clearcutting with the need to conserve enough habitat on public land to make sure that endangered species don’t go extinct.

Additionally, the court also found the project violated the Endangered Species Act because the project was not using science as required by law.  As the Court wrote: “In relying on a 10-acre patch size to define grizzly bear secure habitat in the absence of any scientific evidence showing that such acreage provides adequate habitat, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s failed to use the ‘best available science’ in violation of the Endangered Species Act.” As the court further noted:  “grizzly bears in other Ecosystems have been found to need upwards of 2,000 acres of secure habitat . . . .”  A plan that not only has no scientific basis, but is also contrary to all known existing science, cannot and will not conserve endangered species.

There is no doubt that the majority of Americans view the Yellowstone region as a national, natural treasure that should be protected.  Our legal victory in this case is cause for celebration, but it is bittersweet.  This year, Dr. David Mattson, a world-renowned grizzly bear scientist, passed away.  Dr. Mattson was instrumental in our victory in this case, thanks to his compelling scientific research that explains why 10-acre habitat patches for grizzly bears are not adequate for grizzly bear conservation.  We are thankful for his wise counsel, even though he cannot be here to witness the fruits of his labors.

Finally, the government will likely appeal this court order.  Please make a donation so that we can hire the best lawyers to defend our victory and make sure it sticks. In addition other national forests in grizzly habitat use the same illegal definition of secure grizzly habitat but they won’t change it unless we sue them which will cost more money.

Mike Garrity is the executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Conservation Groups File Lawsuit to Protect Grizzlies, Lynx, and Sage Grouse on the Continental Divide

Mike Garrity

 November 26, 2025

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Lemhi Pass. Photo: US Forest Service.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council on Wildlife and Fish filed a federal lawsuit to protect habitat for three rare wildlife species — grizzly bears, lynx, and sage grouse — on the Continental Divide, just north of  Lemhi Pass, where Lewis and Clark first crossed the Continental Divide from present-day Montana into present-day Idaho.

This area provides a critical wildlife corridor connecting the greater Yellowstone ecosystem to the Northern Continental Divide and Bitterroot ecosystems in Montana and Idaho.

The challenged Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest action, called the “Selway-Saginaw” project, allows destructive logging, road-building, and burning activities across thousands of acres of public lands in this 66,884 acre (or 104.5 square miles) project area in a critical wildlife corridor.

We are deeply disappointed that the government would authorize this destructive project on our public lands considering the number of court rulings that have found similar projects illegal because such projects violate a number of federal laws designed to protect threatened wildlife.

The project area is enormous. It is located about 16 miles west of Bannack, MT, Montana’s first territorial capital, and calls for bulldozing 69.3 miles of new and rebuilt logging roads to enable logging and burning 9138 acres or 14.28 square miles of prime wildlife habitat.

The Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest recently pulled their decision for the Greenhorn project in the Gravelly Mountains when we filed a similar complaint. But the Forest Service is forcing us to sue them again to make them follow the law.

The Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest is also violating their Forest Plan’s requirements prohibiting burning sagebrush within 18 kilometers of sage grouse leks. Yet the Forest Service concedes that ‘Burning would temporarily reduce sagebrush cover in some areas . . . .’  And the Forest Service’s own maps show almost the entire project area is within 18 kilometers of dozens of sage grouse leks. The Project area contains 1,590 acres of priority habitat and 1,235 acres of general habitat for sage grouse.

Grizzly bears have been documented in the Big Hole Landscape, and are suspected to occur in the project area. Currently, about 41% of the project area provides secure habitat for grizzlies. The Selway-Saginaw Project will further reduce grizzly bear secure habitat by 834 acres. There is no scientific research that finds that maintaining secure habitat at less than 42% is sufficient to maintain grizzly bears. The effect of this project would be long-term, approximately 15 to 20 years keeping grizzly bears with cubs from successfully denning in the area.

At the same time the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks is trucking grizzly bears from the Northern Continental Divide  ecosystem to the Yellowstone ecosystem for genetic connectivity.  Why not just follow the law, protect the grizzly corridor, and let grizzlies walk there on their own? This is an important corridor where grizzlies from Yellowstone could travel to breed with grizzlies from other isolated grizzly populations, and do it without trucks and for free.

Almost everyone wants grizzlies to recover and eventually be removed from the protection of the Endangered Species Act but before this can happen we once again need one connected population of grizzlies in the Northern Rockies. Yet the Forest Service is pushing ahead with this logging and burning project which the Forest Service own estimates say will cost taxpayers  $555,000. Yet, at the same time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is spending millions trying to recover grizzly bears. This makes no sense and this project as a whole makes no sense and is illegal which is why we are suing to stop it.

Please consider donating to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies to help us force the federal government from destroying precious wildlife habitat and to Counterpunch for publishing columns like this.

Mike Garrity is the executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.