Court Halts Massive Illegal Old Growth Logging Project in Montana's Little Belt Mountains

JULY 1, 2024

BY MIKE GARRITY

On June 27, 2024, a federal court halted an illegal logging project on federal public lands in the Little Belt Mountains of Montana.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council filed their lawsuit to stop the Horsefly project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest in April 2021. The project called for cutting and burning trees on 10,343 acres, which is more than 16 square miles. To enable the logging, the agency planned on bulldozing a stunning 40.7 miles of new logging roads in the Little Belt Mountains north of White Sulphur Springs, Montana.

The scope of the massive Horsefly landscape-altering proposal is alarming and because the project violated federal law, it had to be enjoined.

The Forest Service used a number of euphemisms in a transparent attempt to disguise what used to be more honestly called logging. For instance, the agency called 3,278 acres of commercial logging ‘intermediate treatment,’ 1,049 acres of clearcutting ‘regeneration harvest,’ 409 acres of clearcutting and possible burning ‘meadow restoration,’ and 465 acres of non-commercial logging ‘rearrangement of fuels’. They’re ‘rearranging’ them alright: from forest ecosystems to stump fields.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/01/court-halts-massive-illegal-old-growth-logging-project-in-montanas-little-belt-mountains/