Mission

Celebrate the success of the cancelled Black Ram timber project that would have allowed 4,000 acres to be commercially logged with around 2,000 acres of clearcutting, and view other timber proposals that still threaten the Yaak Valley with members of the media and conservationists.

In August of 2023, a massive logging project proposed for the Yaak Valley, a remote landscape in the Kootenai National Forest, was stopped when a US District Judge ruled the project violated requirements under the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and National Forest Management Act. This was a massive win for conservationists and wildlife advocates, and the the Yaak. The Black Ram logging project would have allowed nearly 4,000 acres to be commercially logged, with around 2,000 acres of clearcutting. Thank you to our partners at Yaak Valley Forest Council for your work to protect the Yaak ecosystem and the wildlife that rely on it, including fragile grizzly bear populations.

We flew over the cancelled Black Ram project site and the forests of western red cedar and western hemlock that will be left standing, for now. The Yaak Valley remains threatened by other logging projects like the Oly and Buckhorn sites we flew over. EcoFlight's partners are working to find continued protection for the Yaak Valley and its remarkable biodiversity. These forests provide for an array of threatened plant and animal species, and they provide critical climate refugia.

Click for geo-referenced photos from the flight. This .kmz file is best viewed in Google Earth