Monique Merrill

(CN) — A Montana logging project in grizzly habitat in the Kootenai National Forest will remain on hold until federal officials reassess how road use — particularly illegal road use — impacts the bears, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

“This court has repeatedly held that it is arbitrary and capricious to not include illegal motorized use that it knows to occur into calculations, regardless of whether the use is chronic and site specific,” U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen wrote in the 40-page opinion .

The Center for Biological Diversity led environmental groups in suing the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2022, seeking to block the Knotty Pine Project, and Christensen granted the environmentalists’ motion for a preliminary injunc

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