The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the nine groups by Earthjustice before District Judge Don Molloy, charges that the Fish and Wildlife Service mitigation plan for the Rock Creek mine fails to protect threatened grizzly bears and bull trout.
"The service's plan may look good on paper, but it isn't going to make a difference for bears on the ground," said Louisa Willcox of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "Bears will be kicked out of 7,000 acres and they will have nowhere new to go and make a living."
The proposed mine would remove 10,000 tons of copper and silver ore per day from under the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, over a period of 35 years. The conservation agencies argue that the resulting loss of more than 7,000 acres of habitat would be devastating to the 15 or fewer grizzly bears that survive in the Cabinet Mountains.
"Fish and Wildlife just dusted off their old opinion and gave the mine the green light," said Liz Sedler of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, another plaintiff in the suit. "But they still haven't come up with a plan that will keep grizzly bears in the Cabinet-Yaak and bull trout in Rock Creek."
Fish experts also are concerned about the service's failure to protect bull trout, according to the conservation groups.
The agency "is assuming that you can lose any number of local bull trout populations, but this is a threatened species," said David Bayles of the Pacific Rivers Council, another plaintiff. "We can't afford to keep signing off on extinctions, because this fish is in trouble everywhere."
Other plaintiffs in the case are Rock Creek Alliance, Cabinet Resource Group, Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, Idaho Council of Trout Unlimited, and Mineral Policy Center.
Reporter Daryl Gadbow can be reached at 523-5264 or at dgadbow@missoulian.com
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