Logging in the Salmon-Clearwater Divide
Current Status:
WON
Case Title:
Case 3:21-cv-00189-CWD
Staff attorney(s):
Bryan Hurlbutt
Laird J. Lucas
Client(s):
To Protect:
Old-growth forests and habitat for fisher, salmon, steelhead, and grizzly bears.
States:Idaho
Case Information:
June 24, 2022 — Advocates for the West won a major victory when a federal district court issued a ruling halting the “End of the World” and “Hungry Ridge” projects. The court faulted the Forest Service for failing to protect old growth forest.
December 3, 2021 – Advocates for the West filed our reply brief in this case.
October 1, 2021 – Advocates for the West filed our opening brief in this case.
April 28, 2021 – Advocates for the West filed suit on behalf of Friends of the Clearwater to stop two massive logging projects in the Salmon-Clearwater Divide. The Forest Service approved the two projects, “End of the World” and “Hungry Ridge,” based on the misguided notion that to save the forest and its wildlife, you have to log it.
Each massive on their own, together End of the World and Hungry Ridge would result in logging more than 25,000 acres of public land of the Salmon-Clearwater Divide to harvest more than 300 million board feet of timber over the next ten years.
The Salmon-Clearwater Divide is the mountainous, forested ridge rising between the Salmon River and the South Fork Clearwater River. Located between Grangeville, Idaho, and the Gospel Hump Wilderness, the Divide provides habitat for fisher, salmon, steelhead, and grizzly bears, among other at-risk species.
