North Idaho snowmobile plan on hold

A plan governing snowmobile use on public lands in North Idaho that was to be in effect this winter is on hold as federal officials examine its impact on wolverines.

U.S. Forest Service officials confirmed this week that they are pausing the implementation of the Kaniksu Over-Snow Vehicle Use Designation Project, an effort that had produced detailed rules for when and where oversnow vehicles could be used on roughly 1 milion acres in North Idaho.

Tim Gilloon, the Idaho Panhandle National Forest supervisor, said in a statement that the pause is a result of the timing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s listing of the North American wolverine as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

A listing requires the Forest Service to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service on how their decisions could impact protected species. Gilloon said that because the wolverine listing came after the Kaniksu plan was signed, wolverine consultation never happened.

Consultation is going on now, and Gilloon expects it to be finished in early 2025.

The pause means riders in North Idaho will be subject to the rules that were in place before the release of the Kaniksu plan, which set opening and closing dates and would have opened some areas that had long been closed.

In particular, a court-ordered closure of some 250,000 acres in the woodland caribou recovery zone in North Idaho remains in place.

The Kaniksu plan was to become the first winter travel management plan for the forest’s north zone in Bonner and Boundary counties. It would have complied with an agency mandate to craft a winter travel plan and would have resolved the injunction that prohibited snowmobile use in the caribou recovery zone.

Attempts to write the plan have been going on since that injunction was put in place in 2007 but sputtered through a series of delays. A new deadline was set in a Fish and Wildlife Service biological opinion on grizzly bears, which required the agency to complete the plan by the end of 2023.

Last December, the Forest Service released the plan. It largely mirrored recommendations from the North Idaho Working Group, a collaborative consisting of conservationists, snowmobilers and others that formed to craft a proposal with which all sides could live.

In the end, it opened more acreage to snowmobile and snowbike use, including coveted areas in the upper Pack River drainage. It also limited when the vehicles are allowed on the landscape to safeguard habitat for grizzly bears coming out of hibernation, and some areas were to be closed all winter to protect habitat for species that rely on deep snow, including wolverines.

In January, Forest Service officials said all that was left to do was publish a map detailing the rules and put up some signs. They fully expected that to happen before the winter season.

Now that’s all on the back burner.

“It’s really disappointing after all the hard work that the group put into formulating that plan,” said Brad Smith, conservation director for the Idaho Conservation League and a member of the working group.

A legal threat is also looming. In August, a coalition of environmental groups sent the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service a 60-day notice of intent to sue over the Kaniksu plan.

Adam Rissien, the rewilding manager for WildEarth Guardians, one of the groups threatening to sue, said the groups are concerned about the damage the plan will cause to more than just wolverines. They’re worried it doesn’t do enough to protect lynx or grizzly bears, and that allowing increased motorized use might harm whitebark pine trees.

He’s also concerned about how the plan deals with conflicts between cross country skiers and snowmobilers in places like Harrison Lakes, where motorized use has been off-limits for years.

“There’s a lot of pieces here,” Rissien said.