The Devil is Always in the Details

I don’t know Mike Garrity. I asked for the honor of an interview but he refused, even after an promised to let him review his answers to my questions to make sure that I hadn't misquoted him. Crickets.

All the more reason why his recent op-ed concerning grizzly bear management and saving old growth forests caught my eye. It has appeared in several newspapers in Montana and Idaho. Among them: three Missoula newspapers, the Billings Gazette, the Idaho Capital Sun and  our local paper, the Coeur d’ Alene Press.

Had these newspapers done some fact-checking they would have learned that there is much more to the grizzly story than Mr. Garrity’s op-ed reveals. As we say in the news business, the devil is always in the details.

Mr. Garrity is the Executive Director and Treasurer of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. It has offices in Missoula and Helena, Montana and is easily one of the best known serial litigators in the West.

Sueing federal and state forest resource management agencies under the aegis of the frequently misused Equal Access to Justice Act has beenMr. Garrity’s business model for years.

If he stops, the Alliance will go broke. I wish he would ditch his taxpayer paid “sue and settle” model in favor of arbitration before there is nothing left to save. Public criticism of Mr. Garrity's litigious activities is widespread and increasing rapidly. It's not a happy time for the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Nor is it a fun time for other serial litigators who are rightfully being blamed for litigating forest restoration projects that burned before forest restoration work could begin. The Grasshopper project in Oregon's Mt. Hood National Forest being the latest example of the enormous environmental harm litigators are doing in the name of "saving" forests.

The only person who got the Garrity op-ed/grizzly story right without even mentioning him was Idaho’s senior U.S. Senator, Mike Crapo. Here’s what he said in a recent Facebook post.

"The recovery of the grizzly bear in the West is a conservation success story made possible by decades of work from state, tribal, federal and local conservation partners. For years, I have advocated for returning grizzly bear management to the states as recovery objectives and benchmarks have been achieved. Secretary Burgum’s announcement moves us one step closer to allowing Idaho wildlife professionals to manage a recovered grizzly population in a way that protects both the species and Idaho communities."

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wants to shift grizzly management responsibilities from Interior to the states in which grizzlies are located. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in Burgum’s wheelhouse so what he says gets lots of press attention.

Whether Burgum’s proposal will gain any traction in Congress is hard to say, but the mere suggestion is driving Mr. Garrity nuts. His op-ed thus champions the idea that the Alliance’s recent win in the Ninth Circuit Court saves both grizzlies and old growth forests in north Idaho’s Selkirk Mountains Ecosystem.

Actually, it does the exact opposite. More on this in a moment.

The Selkirk Mountains Ecosystem and its adjacent Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem span a combined three million acres in western Montana, northern Idaho, northeast Washington and lower British Columbia. 4,687 square miles – an area three times the size of Rhode Island.

The lawsuit that the Alliance won concerns a proposed thinning and biomass project at Hanna Flats, near Nordman, Idaho on State Highway 57. The tree-lined highway links Priest River with many enclaves on Priest Lake.

The proposed project spans 10 square miles – 6,600 acres within the 1.6 million acre Selkirk Mountain Ecosystem.

It is not the “massive and illegal “ disaster that Mr. Garrity alleges. But it is at a standstill for the third or fourth time since the Idaho Panhandle National Forest and the Idaho Department of lands developed it as a woody biomass fuels reduction project in 2016.

In its July 16 ruling in Alliance for the Wild Rockies v Higgins, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the project could not proceed because it is based on Wildland Urban Interface definition associated with the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act.

WUI’s are federally designated areas where national forests surround or are adjacent to rural homesites where the risk of wildfire is abnormally high. There are dozens of WUIs in northwest Montana, northern Idaho and northeast Washington. Some are based on the HFRA standard. Others aren’t. Hanna Flats is.

By a 2-1 vote, the three-judge Ninth Circuit Court panel sent the case back to the federal district court in Missoula for further review. Your crystal ball won’t help you predict what the Federal District Court in Missoula will do next. Nor will mine.

The Hanna Flats Project is not “unsustainable” as Mr. Garrity alleges in his op-ed.  And it is not a massive clearcut. It is a thinning and prescribed burning project designed to reduce the woody debris component on 6,600 acres at Hanna Flats.

At Hanna Flats, flammable woody debris averages 30 tons per acre - so 198,000 tons of debris waiting for the next lightning strike.

I first saw this kind of forest restoration work done 20-some years ago at the Lick Creek Experimental Forest in western Montana’ Bitterroot Valley. The late Steve Arno, a PhD fire ecologist with the Forest Service’s Fire Sciences Lab in Missoula spent days showing me his Lick Creek work in the Bitterroot Valley.

Arno's research involved thinning and prescribed burning, same as Hanna Flats. The work has since been replicated dozens of times in most of the West’s forested states. Successful replication is key to validating forest research.

Steve’s 2005  book, Mimicking Nature’s Fire, which he co-authored with the late Carl Fiedler, is well worth reading. You can buy a copy on eBay for about $16.

I doubt Mr. Garrity has read it. If he had he would not have been foolish enough to write what he wrote in his op-ed.  “This is precisely the kind of conduct that ensures these grizzlies will go extinct if we don’t step in with litigation."

·       “This is a big win for endangered grizzly bears, but in addition the court’s ruling also protects the rights of homeowners in this area who strongly opposed the massive clearcutting operations that would destroy the forests around their homes and trails and lead to harmful sedimentation in rivers and streams.”

No “massive clearcutting operation” is planned at Hanna Flats. Just some thinning and prescribed burning that is needed to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire in the Nordman area.

There are two beautiful lakeside resorts nearby: Hill’s on Luby Bay and Elkins on Reeder Bay, just north of Nordman.

Hill’s also owns a nearby 18-hole, Par 72 championship golf course. Several years ago, the Idaho Panhandle National Forest completed a thinning project on the road that leads to the resort. The objective was to reduce wildfire risk. Same as Hanna Flats.

And, oh, by the way, grizzlies aren’t “endangered.” The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service added them to the Endangered Species list as a threatened species in the lower 48 states in 1975.

There is a big difference between endangered and threatened species listings. Threatened listings permit experiments aimed at improving grizzly habitat. Endangered listings don’t.

We have photographed both Hanna Flats and the Priest Lake thinning projects. The sedimentation Mr. Garrity alleges isn’t there. Nor are there any massive clearcuts. Just some thinnings and prescribed burns that replicate natural fires that have burned across northern Idaho for eons.

Because the proposed Hanna Flats project is science-based. It is easily the best option for reducing the risks associated with stand replacing wildfires in watersheds and around million dollar homes.

This brings us to Selkirk and Cabinet Yaak Ecosystem reports. We know these reports well because one of the co-authors is Wayne Kassworm, a renowned grizzly specialist who lives in Libby, Montana. Definitely grizzly country.

You can read the very detailed reports for both ecosystems here. The Cabinet-Yaak report is for 2024 and the Selkirk report is for 2023.

We met Mr. Kassworm several years ago when we toured the first of several grizzly habitat restoration thinnings on Hecla Mining Company timberland in the Bull River Valley south of Troy, Montana. He helped the logger – Chas Vincent – lay out the thinning. You’ll find a related video interview with Wayne on our website. At Evergreen, our job is public outreach.

We have two goals on the Hecla tracts. [1] thin trees to reduce wildfire risk and [2] create new food sources for hungry grizzlies so they’ll stop shopping for groceries in residential garbage cans and around school playgrounds in Libby and Troy.

Sunlight in our thinnings powers new growth in roots, bulbs and berries that haven’t germinated in many years. These are very important food sources for grizzlies – especially huckleberries loaded with sugar that grizzly metabolism turns to fat before they hibernate.

Our thinnings include secluded travel routes bears from Glacier National Park and southeast British Columbia can use to circumvent neighborhoods around Libby and Troy. Grizzlies are solitary animals that prefer not to be seen.

Trail cameras hung with the help of wildlife biologists from the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula are monitoring grizzly movements. Monitoring will continue for several years before research station biologists write a peer-reviewed report that will define the next steps.

We believe this report and Mr. Kassworm’s Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk ecosystem studies will help light the way to a much brighter for all fish and wildlife species – including grizzlies – living in northwest Montana, northern Idaho, northeast Washington and lower British Columbia.

It will also do much to protect millions of acres of forest and grassland, thousands homes and a four-season recreation paradise that all Americans can enjoy. As we've written dozens of times: Clean air, clean water, abundant fish and wildlife habitat and a wealth of year-round outdoor recreation opportunity.

Congress is the only body that can stop Mr. Garrity and his co-conspirators from burning the West's great forests to the ground. The Equal Access to Justice Act must be replaced with binding artibration.

You bring your best idea for managing a particular forest restoration project and we'll bring ours. A three-judge panel will decide which idea best conforms to the current Forest Plan.