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After issuing a 60-day intent to sue in September, nonprofit environmental law group Earthjustice filed a formal complaint against federal agencies involved in the Bitterroot National Forest Plan. The complaint, filed on Tuesday, criticizes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service and the Bitterroot National Forest for failure to follow guidelines enforced by the Endangered Species Act and seeks to rule the plan as unlawful. The four plaintiffs filing against federal agencies include Friends of the Bitterroot, Friends of Clearwater, Native Ecosystems Council, and the WildEarth Guardians. The lawsuit centers around the Bitterroot Forest Plan amendments’ erasure of road density limitations and how potential new road construction could impact grizzly bear and bull trout population in the Bitterroot. “Plaintiffs thus turn to this Court for relief. To protect grizzly bears and bull trout, Plaintiffs request the Court declare unlawful and vacate the Forest Service’s Programmatic Amendment 40, as well as the 6 underlying Biological Opinion and Environmental Assessment (EA), and remand to the agencies for further analysis,” the complaint reads. Conservation groups took issue with Programmatic Amendment 40 , which allows the Forest Service to, according to the plaintiffs’ letter of intent (issued on Sep. 10), “open or construct new roads without closing other roads." “Plaintiffs challenge the Forest Service’s 2023 Programmatic Amendment 40 to the Land Management Plan for the Bitterroot National Forest, which eliminated restrictions on road retention and motorized use without adequately considering resulting impacts on grizzly bears and bull trout,” states the complaint. Jim Miller, president of the Friends of the Bitterroot, told the Ravalli Republic in September that road densities in the Bitterroot Forest are “probably the biggest contributor to stream sedimentation, harming trout fisheries.” Besides increasing stream sediment, high road densities could also negatively impact interconnectivity between bear populations, a constant struggle for the state’s already fragmented grizzly population. “Roads displace grizzly bears and degrade bull trout streams” said Ben Scrimshaw, Earthjustice attorney, in a written statement . “The Bitterroot provides crucial connective habitat between grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem and the isolated Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, so allowing for limitless road building and motorized use through this area is a huge step backward in the quest for recovery.” “Grizzly bears require large expanses of intact ecosystem,” Miller told the Ravalli Republic after the lawsuit was filed on Tuesday. “Road densities fragment habitat and compromise the grizzly bear’s ability to inhabit those areas.” Miller mentioned how grizzly bears in Montana have started to trickle back into the Bitterroot and how an increase in road densities could disrupt a gradual reintroduction of the species to the valley. “We see grizzly bears naturally moving into our area,” Miller said. “In order for the Bitterroot ecosystem to be good habitat for grizzly bears, we can’t have too many roads and right now the Bitterroot National Forest has too many roads.” Miller claims that grizzly bears are not recovered enough to be subjected to any kind of human-caused endangerment and that Programmatic Amendment 40 does not adequately analyze the effects of its contents on species like grizzly bears and bull trout. The complaint states that there are two significant ways in which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to analyze Programmatic Amendment 40’s impacts on grizzly bears. “(1) it failed to consider road-density impacts on grizzly bears outside of secure, unroaded habitat; and (2) it allowed the Forest Service to overinflate current and future calculations of secure grizzly bear habitat by including fractions of land as small as one acre in size — approximately .00156 square miles,” reads the complaint. These criticisms were also mentioned in the conservation groups’ letter of intent submitted in September. According to Scrimshaw, the lawsuit was not immediately filed after the 60-day-notice transpired because Earthjustice received “last-minute response letters from the agencies.” “It was two letters responding to our 60-day-notice,” Scrimshaw said. “One letter addressed our concerns about impacts to bull trout and the other one was about impacts to grizzly bears.” These response letters are referenced numerous times in footnotes throughout the complaint. “They (federal agencies) said that they would go back and reinitiate consultation on this problem of unauthorized motorized use, which is just a very, very small component of our grizzly bear claims,” Scrimshaw said. “They went through our other arguments and tried to provide rationale, which I didn’t find particularly compelling.” Scrimshaw said these response letters delayed the litigation process because Earthjustice wanted to carefully analyze their contents before proceeding. Relevant responses provided in the agencies’ letters are addressed individually in the lawsuit. Earthjustice highlights discrepancies in each of the responses and provides reasoning as to their failure to address the conservation groups’ complaint. “In response to Plaintiffs’ 60-day notice letter, the agencies asserted that they ‘will examine this issue to determine if further clarification is warranted.’ The agencies did not commit to making any changes and have provided no timeline for completing consultation,” reads one of the footnotes in the complaint. Scrimshaw said that the next step of the legal process involves federal agencies responding to the complaint. “They will submit an answer and we’ll get together with the agencies and work out a case management plan that sets deadlines,” Scrimshaw said. “We’ll get that sorted out together once the agency attorneys have made their appearances in the case; it will be a little bit of a process.” Jackson Kimball is the local government reporter for the Ravalli Republic. Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) on Friday said it would continue to exhibit inclusiveness in its Renewed Hope Employment Initiative aimed at checking the scourge of unemployment in the country. The Director-General of NDE, Mr. Silas A. Agara, said this at the flag-off of the Renewed Hope Employment Initiative of 93, 731 beneficiaries across the country. Agara, represented by the Plateau state zonal coordinator , Mr. Emmanuel Dimka, said the initiative was part of the directives of President Bola Ahmad Tinubu’s overhauling of the Directorate for optimal employment creations. He said, “The Renewed Hope Employment Initiative is our modest short term effort at checking the scourge of unemployment in Nigeria. “The current employment initiative has been designed to engage a total of 93,731 unskilled and unemployed persons across Nigeria. Inclusiveness has been a cardinal consideration as we designed this programme. We have ensured that a minimum of 10 persons from each of the 8, 809 electoral wards in Nigeria were recruited.” He added that under his watch, the NDE had assured the adoption of cutting edge technology in the design and execution of the programme, where all applicants registered through the Directorate online portal which for the first the NDE had a credible database of its beneficiaries. Some of the prospective trainees expressed appreciation for their selection, saying it was a good thing for them to be selected.
American actor John Stamos is thanking two Chilliwack drummers after he called on them to help him perfect a drum solo for a Beach Boys concert. Brandon Toews and Dylan Weightman of Chilliwack were down in Los Angeles collaborating with the famous actor and musician as he prepared for an upcoming performance. Stamos, lovingly known as Uncle Jesse from sitcom Full House, has been playing with the Beach Boys for 40 years. He said he wanted to rediscover his love of drumming and needed help with a new solo, so he contacted Drumeo, an Abbotsford-based music school where Toews is the content director and Weightman the vice president. But it wasn’t just a drum lesson, it was a video project as well. “Today we released one of the coolest videos we’ve ever worked on at Drumeo,” Toews wrote on social media on Nov. 29. “I’ve gotten to know John Stamos over the last year and after sending some videos back and forth, we decided it was time to work on a new video together.” Weightman and fellow Drumeo teammate Brandon Scott developed the video concept and brought it to life, Toews said. In Drumeo’s 25-minute YouTube video called ‘John Stamos learns a drum solo in 10 days,’ Toews is seen working with Stamos on the drums and breaking down what makes a great solo. Near the end of the video, Stamos pounds out a minute-long drum solo at the Beach Boys concert that Toews called a 10 out of 10. Stamos “crushed it,” Toews said. “This was an absolute dream project collaborating with John Stamos to tell the story of evolving his Beach Boys drum solo in tribute of (late Foo Fighters drummer) Taylor Hawkins," Weightman wrote on social media. Weightman called Stamos talented, generous and handsome. “It was cool just to work with John – the fact that he’s a wonderful human being was a total bonus,” Weightman said. Stamos returned the compliments “Back at ya, Dylan. Total pleasure. You’re extremely helpful and very talented good man. And I absolutely love the video.” At the end of the video, Stamos pulls Toews up on stage to play a few songs with the Beach Boys, which Toews was not expecting. "John's a beast, man. What an incredible solo and, as a teacher, how cool to see your student go up there and just destroy a drum solo like that," Toews said. "Well done, John. You're an animal."