The U.S. Forest Service rescinded its Cooke City Fuels and Forest Health Project in response to litigation by conservation groups, showing that new power the Trump administration granted the agency doesn’t reconcile for lack of proof.
A case filed in March by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, former Forest Service ecologist Dr. Jesse Logan, Gallatin Wildlife Association, and Native Ecosystems Council resulted in a victory for plaintiffs on May 5 when the Forest Service withdrew its controversial forest management project slated east of Cooke City. The project is one of three in the Custer Gallatin National Forest that borders the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and was expedited under new jurisdiction granted to the agency for forests in an “emergency situation.”
According to the plaintiffs, success was anchored in the area’s importance as habitat for whitebark pine and grizzly bears, as well as how the Healthy Forests Restoration Act defines the wildland-urban interface, aspects that have already been tested by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in Montana courts.
At the heart of the dispute was the project’s ecological rationale, particularly concerning the fate of whitebark pine, a high-elevation species listed in 2022 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, calls the area “one of the healthiest whitebark pine forests in the nation,” with research finding the species at risk for an 80-percent reduction in the 21st century due to a decline in suitable climates. He also argued the project ignored legally mandated protections for other species listed by the ESA, proposing to cut and burn thousands of trees under the banner of “restoration.”
“I am concerned that the Forest Service will declare the project an emergency as a way to have the logging go forward. But they haven’t done anything to demonstrate it’s an emergency,” Garrity said. “That’s why the Forest Service shouldn’t have fired all these seasonal workers that were doing surveys for them.”
Logan, a co-plaintiff who lives half of the year in Cooke City, agreed, saying the treatments lacked evidence to support forest resilience and risked doing more harm than good. He also noted the proposal remained largely unchanged from initial scoping through final approval, suggesting decisions were predetermined.
“I worked for the agency for 15 years,” Logan said. “I’m a strong supporter of public lands and responsible management of public lands. I’m a champion of the Forest Service, but not in these circumstances.”
According to Garrity, another part of the Cooke City proposal that likely wouldn’t have held in court was the Forest Service’s characterization of the project area as part of the WUI. Under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, the agency can forgo some of the typical land-management provisions aimed at protecting habitat for ESA-protected species, but that is limited to roughly 1.5 miles outside of the previously designated WUI boundary and also must be terrain that is more than 30 degrees in elevation grade.
“This project was proposing things well beyond the interface between development and forest,” Logan said.
“I am concerned that the Forest Service will declare the project an emergency as a way to have the logging go forward. But they haven’t done anything to demonstrate it’s an emergency.”
Michael Garrity, executive director, Alliance for the Wild Rockies
The final lynchpin in the Cooke City project’s push back to square one was that the Custer Gallatin National Forest redefined grizzly bear-secure areas to 10 acres, a figure Garrity says ignores decades of research that shows this should be at least 2,500 acres. Studies show that even in areas where bears are protected, like national parks, most known grizzly mortalities occur within one-third of a mile of a road. These same factors helped the Alliance to win a similar case against the Forest Service last year for a project that bordered the western flank of Yellowstone National Park.
In a similar case litigated by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in the Flathead National Forest, the judge found that the Forest Service referenced contradictory definitions of the WUI, making it impossible to determine whether the exemption had been correctly applied in project documents.
More broadly, science has challenged the rationale underpinning Forest Service projects. A 2023 study found that federal wildfire research has, at times, misrepresented historical forest conditions to justify thinning and logging practices.
“The solution is the Forest Service needs to follow the law like all Americans have to,” Garrity said.
Public outcry against the agency’s new scope of authority has been gaining traction, however. In a May 6 email to Mountain Journal from Forest Service officials, and following a MoJo report on Monday, the nearby Bear-Palmer forest project has extended its comment deadline to June 1, allowing more adequate time for people to respond substantively.
CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that grizzly bear-secure areas should be at least 2,500 acres, according to Michael Garrity. It also is corrected to more accurately reflect that most known grizzly mortalities occur within one-third of a mile of a road.