Kootenai National Forest

A federal judge has blocked what would have been a decade-long project logging nearly 4000 acres in northwest Montana.

The Tub Gulch Fire is burning within Libby’s ‘asbestos forest’ near the defunct vermiculite mine. Forest Service crews began emergency fire prevention work this week in the area around Butte’s largest municipal water supply.The Flathead County Commission enacted an emergency declaration Tuesday.

A federal judge halted a logging project in northwest Montana on Monday. The court says federal officials didn’t properly evaluate whether the project would harm threatened grizzly bears and Canada lynx.

A federal court in Missoula Monday heard oral arguments in a case that could restrict the use of fire retardant near lakes, rivers and streams, and halted work on a timber sale in the northwest corner of the state.

Environmental groups sued the Kootenai National Forest today, June 30, over its approval of a controversial logging project in Northwest Montana.

The Kootenai National Forest finalized a contentious logging project on Tuesday after a court-ordered evaluation found that the Black Ram project won’t severely impact grizzly bears and other threatened species. But environmental groups are pushing back against that finding.

A U.S. District Court judge put a hold on the project Wednesday on the basis that the Forest Service did not properly evaluate the project’s impact on the small threatened grizzly bear population in the bordering Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem.

The nearly 5,000-acre Knotty Pine project would include roughly 3,000 acres of commercial logging as well 40 miles of road maintenance and road building. WildEarth Guardians in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Missoula argue that work will harm the local grizzly bear population.

Under what’s known as Good Neighbor Authority, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation can carry out logging, thinning and other projects on U.S. Forest Service Land.

Earlier this week, Gov. Greg Gianforte announced one of the first timber sales to go through a state-federal partnership this year. The amount of timber…