Kilgore Mine Exploration Followup Case
Current Status:
Inactive
Date Filed:
May 26, 2022
Case Title:
Idaho Conservation League and Greater Yellowstone Coalition v. U.S. Forest Service
Staff attorney(s):
Bryan Hurlbutt
Client(s):
Idaho Conservation League
Greater Yellowstone Coalition
To Protect:
Wildlife
Water Quality
Forest Habitat
Idaho
Case Information:
January 10, 2023 — Advocates for the West filed our reply brief on summary judgment.
November 1, 2022 — Advocates for the West filed our opening brief in support of a motion for summary judgment.
May 26, 2022 — Advocates for the West filed a new complaint challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s latest approval of the Kilgore gold exploration project in the Centennial Mountains in Idaho. Following previous court rulings, the Forest Service in November 2021 issued a new Environmental Assessment and again approved the project. Notably absent from the new assessment were any additional safeguards against the risks to water quality and fish.
The project, about 80 miles north of Idaho Falls on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, was overwhelmingly opposed in thousands of comments submitted to the agency last year for its potential to threaten water quality, wildlife, and the way of life for thousands of Idahoans.
In addition to water quality impacts, the project’s intensive road construction and drilling would degrade important habitat for endangered or imperiled species – including grizzly bears, lynx, bighorn sheep, whitebark pine, and Yellowstone cutthroat trout – and fragment habitat for elk and other big game.
