A new lawsuit filed late last week against the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that a logging project in western Montana should be halted because it’s just one of more than a dozen projects that have chipped away at habitat for native bull trout, which are on the federal Endangered Species list.

The lawsuit filed by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in federal court says that the Redd Bull 2 Project, which has been sited west of St. Regis, would authorize logging on 6,408 acres of land, which would include the use of prescribed fire and commercial thinning.

Furthermore, the conservation group says that the federal agencies have acknowledged that the project will likely continue to hurt already imperiled populations of bull trout as well as adversely affecting grizzly bears in the area, also protected by the Endangered Species Act.

The lawsuit says that road construction, including construction of new roads, road maintenance on 111 miles, as well as “road realignment” will increase the amount of sediment that will wash into the watersheds where bull trout are already struggling. Furthermore, the lawsuit said that 17 different smaller projects in the area have all contributed to gradual but substantial habitat loss for the endangered fish.

And while the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service do not comment on pending litigation, the agencies filed documents about the project’s scope, which say despite the habitat becoming temporary degraded, the overall project will be “beneficial through improved habitat conditions.”

According to the lawsuit, the project includes three of the most important bull trout spawning areas in the Middle Clark Fork River Core area — Ward Creek, North Fork Little Joe Creek and the South Fork of Little Joe Creek.

In written comments, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks noted that the project includes streams that “act as essential spawning and rearing areas providing wild trout to the fishery that underlies an important part of the local economy.”

By the Forest Service’s own estimations, sediment deposits would increase 26% during the 15-year project in the South Fork Little Joe Creek; 26% during that same period for North Fork Little Joe Creek, and 106% in Ward Creek.

A 2008 species analysis completed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed that the bull trout in the area are “at risk because of very limited and/or declining numbers, range, and/or habitat, making the bull trout in this core area vulnerable to extirpation.” Last year, the FWS updated that estimate and found that bull trout populations in the area are “significantly decreasing,” being wiped out in some areas of the streams in the past 15 to 30 years, according to court documents.

To help bolster its case, attorneys for the Alliance for the Wild Rockies reported that Montana FWP has stopped counts in Cedar Creek and both forks of Little Joe Creek “because so few fluvial bull trout were present that conducting annual … counts was not productive.”

The lawsuit asks federal magistrate Kathleen DeSoto to halt the project, noting that it violates federal law, and force the Forest Service to vacate the finding of “No Significant Impact” until the project’s plan complies with the law.

“Bull trout lost an estimated 60% of their historical habitat range before they were even listed as ‘threatened’ on the Endangered Species List,” said Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “Yet the Forest Service wants to bulldoze and clearcut some of Montana’s few remaining, most pristine, bull trout watersheds that flow out of the Great Burn of 1910 area. Given the bull trout’s struggle against extinction, we’re going to court to halt this highly destructive project.”