Logging Project Halted Near YNP
A federal judge has halted a 7,000-acre eastern Idaho logging project in potential lynx habitat near Yellowstone National Park, after finding the U.S. Forest Service failed to follow federal laws intended to safeguard the environment. U.S. District Magistrate Judge Candy Dale’s decision last week is the result of a lawsuit by environmental groups over the Split Creek timber harvest – but it also affects about 390,000 additional acres in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. The 7,000 acres were part of nearly 400,000 acres designated as lynx habitat in 2001, but the Forest Service created a new map in 2005 that removed that land as lynx habitat and opened it to logging.
