State habitat plan jeopardizes imperiled species

(November 2010)  Grizzly bears, Canada lynx, bull trout, west-slope cutthroat trout, Columbia red-band trout. Their survial is threatened by timber harvests on State school trust lands. Yet the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation’s (DNRC) plan to protect the habitat of these imperiled species utterly fails its mandate.

DNRC made only minimal changes to its draft environmental impact statement and Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), so the final plan remains insufficient—and experts from state and federal agencies agree. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks, and Montana Department of Environmental Quality all commented on the draft documents. All of them said they do not meet DNRC’s obligation under the federal Endangered Species Act. The final documents ignore all of the concerns those agencies expressed.

Three very important changes need to made before DNRC officially adopts the HCP:

1. Shorten the Plan’s 50-year timeframe to allow for the uncertainties associated with climate change. Fifty years is too long to be locked into a Plan that does not even account for the impacts of climate change. A ten-year Plan, which can be extended if monitoring indicates that specific habitat benchmarks are met, would be far more reasonable.
2. Include a true “conservation” alternative. Road miles, road density, logging, and grazing will increase under all of the alternatives considered in the Plan. No alternatives were considered that actually improve habitat conditions for threatened and endangered species.
3. Include all State school trust lands critical for the protection of these species. In the HCP, DNRC omits some State trust lands that are critical habitat for grizzly bears, lynx, and bull trout. Excluding these lands makes it impossible to analyze the cumulative impacts and landscape-level effects of management and development activities on these species and their habitats.

Thank you to all of the MEIC members who submitted comments to DNRC.  The agency is expected to make a decision on the final HCP in early January 2011.

To read the HCP go to www.dnrc.mt.gov/HCP/FinalEIS.asp

For more information

• DNRC and USFWS respond to public comments on the proposed Habitat Conservation Plan.  Read comments prepared for the Montana Land Board by staff of DNRC ad USFWS.
  

• Read the draft HCP 
• Read MEIC's comments to DNRC on the Plan
  

• The “Top Ten” Concerns with DNRC’s Preferred HCP Alternative for Lynx [And proposed solutions] by David Gaillard, Defenders of Wildlife, August 2009
• The “Top Ten” Concerns with DNRC’s Preferred HCP Alternative for Grizzly Bears [And proposed solutions]
  Natural Resources Defense Council, October 6, 2009