Bull trout swimming. Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Bull trout lost approximately 60 percent of their historic range before they were even listed as ‘threatened’ on the Endangered Species List in 1998. Yet the Forest Service wants to bulldoze and clearcut some of Montana’s few remaining, most pristine, bull trout watersheds that flow out of the Great Burn of 1910 area. Given the bull trout’s struggle against extinction, we’re going to court to halt this highly destructive project.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a lawsuit on August 22 in federal district court in Missoula challenging the Redd Bull 2 logging project in the Superior Ranger District of the Lolo National Forest west of St. Regis, Montana.

The challenged decision authorizes logging on 6,408 acres, including 4,903 acres of clearcutting with individual clearcuts up to 973 acres (more than 1.5 square miles) in size in Federally Designated Bull Trout Critical Habitat. Add to that the intentional burning and 1,404 acres of commercial thinning, and this is a recipe for more sedimentation, less shade, and hotter, dirtier streams — the exact opposite of what bull trout require for their very survival.

Bull trout’s precipitous decline is........

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