Habitat Conservation Plan: Will it Protect Threatened and Endangered Species?

[March 2010 Update]

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.

[December 2009]  How should the State of Montana manage its lands to guarantee the long-term survival of threatened and endangered species such as grizzly bears, Canada lynx, and bull trout? That is the question the State has been studying since 2003.  After all these years it has an answer: cut more trees on State lands.

In August 2009, the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) released a draft habitat conservation plan (HCP) for 548,500 acres of western Montana’s State school trust lands.  The alternatives considered in the HCP and accompanying environmental analysis are “intended to conserve the habitats of threea threatened species…over the next 50 years.” 

DNRC’s proposed plan fails to adequately protect these species.  Instead it appears to make an existing problem worse by allowing increased timber harvesting in areas that are critical to the species’ survival.  For lynx, as an example, the HCP requires DNRC to maintain areas for lynx to hunt in for just 20% of their habitat, to maintain only 65% of their habitat as generally suitable, and has no requirement to maintain denning habitat other than leaving two slash piles per square mile.

Most distressing is the outright failure of the HCP to include any proposals for addressing the impacts that global warming will have on habitat in the next 50 years.  The document acknowledges that those impacts will occur.  For example, in the case of bull trout habitat it mentions: 

• “loss of thermally suitable natal habitat area ranging from 18 to 92%”
• “water temperature will continue to rise”
• “most habitat loss in (central Idaho) was attributable to recent trends of increasing air temperatures and decreasing flows”
• “warming climate will cause spring runoff to begin a month earlier, resulting in low water flows during the summer and fall months.  This could affect the reproductive successes of bull trout, which spawn during late summer low flows…”

But the HCP proposes to do nothing to address these impacts.  Instead it says that DNRC will deal with the problem of global warming by participating in the Governor’s Climate Change Advisory Committee.  It neglects to mention that the Committee finished its work almost two years ago and that the Governor has failed to adopt even a single recommendation contained in the Committee’s report!

Finally, DNRC proposes allowing timber harvesting up to 25 feet from streams.  Scientific studies show that larger buffer zones are essential to protect water quality and fish populations.  The U.S. Forest Service requires 300-foot setbacks in similar situations.  DNRC’s proposal is simply inadequate to ensure the long-term protection of sensitive fish species such as bull trout.

A number of endangered species experts and biologists submitted comments that criticized the plan for failing to address the likely impacts of climate change on wildlife habitat, for proposing to increase timber harvesting at the expense of sensitive species, and for not considering a real conservation alternative in the environmental analysis.

DNRC is now reviewing the large number of comments it received on the draft plan and does not expect to produce a final HCP and EIS until some time in 2010.

• 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