A Ferry County non-profit group is celebrating a legal victory in its fight to preserve habitat for the Canada lynx in Northeast Washington.
The Kettle Range Conservation Group says an agreement was reached in its lawsuit challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s Bulldog Restoration Project in the Kettle River Mountains.
The Group says the settlement provides general protections for lynx habitat in the Colville National Forest, and modifies the itinerary for the Bulldog Project to include protections for the wild felines, as well as other species of ecological importance in the region.
The Bulldog project is slated to have impacts on three roadless areas within the Kettle River Range, including the logging of 5,980 acres; forest thinning of 8,106 acres; and the elimination of wildfire fuels on 13,944 acres.
The legal agreement also calls for the reestablishment of a Lynx Analysis Unit utilizing boundaries established prior to 2020, until such time that a full evaluation of the environmental impacts of redrawing the Unit’s boundaries and a process for public can be conducted and completed.
Kettle Range is based in Republic, Wash. and was represented in the suit by Western Environmental Law Center of Eugene, Ore.
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