[MCN] BREAKING: Federal judge overturns Forest Service plan to poison Buffalo Creek in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness

[Matthew Koehler]

For Release: Friday, October 24, 2025





*Federal judge overturns Forest Service plan to poison Buffalo Creek in the
Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness *



*Court rules in favor of Wilderness Watch, strikes down Forest Service
poisoning plan in Buffalo Creek watershed near Yellowstone *

MISSOULA, MT — In a landmark ruling for wilderness protection, U.S.
District Judge Donald Molloy granted summary judgment
<https://wildernesswatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Molloy_Buffalo_Creek_Order_10_23_2025.pdf>
in favor of Wilderness Watch and vacated the Forest Service’s approval of a
plan to poison more than 45 miles of Buffalo Creek in the
Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness at the behest of Montana Fish Wildlife and
Parks (FWP).

Molloy found the project violated the Wilderness Act on several grounds
and, “[u]nlike other resource management statutes, the Wilderness Act is
not merely a procedural checklist or a delegation of discretion to a
managing agency to weigh competing uses; the Wilderness Act mandates the
preservation of wilderness character.”

Styled as an effort to expand Yellowstone cutthroat trout populations, the
project
<https://wildernesswatch.org/poison-has-no-place-in-the-absaroka-beartooth-wilderness/>
would have involved a decade’s worth of helicopter landings plus the use of
other motorized equipment to poison and kill fish, amphibians, and insects
in numerous lakes, ponds, and wetlands and nearly fifty miles of
high-mountain wilderness streams. After the watershed was poisoned with the
toxic chemical rotenone, FWP planned to stock the naturally fishless
streams and lakes with cutthroat trout.



Molloy rejected the Forests Service’s claims that the project would restore
natural conditions in the Wilderness, pointing out that because the
watershed was naturally fishless, “the wilderness neither depended on
Yellowstone cutthroat trout for ecological balance nor contributed them to
the watershed as a whole. As a result, conserving them serves no wilderness
purpose.”


“This is one of the most important rulings for protecting the integrity of
the Wilderness Act in the law’s 60-year history,” said Wilderness Watch
executive director, George Nickas. “The idea that managers can substitute
their desired conditions for what Nature provides in these wild places
threatens to destroy the profound values that set Wilderness areas
apart. Judge Molloy’s thoroughly reasoned Order spells out precisely why
the agency’s misguided aims are fundamentally at odds with the law. Every
manager who oversees Wilderness needs to read and understand it.”



Judge Molloy’s ruling clarifies how the Act must be applied: “the
Wilderness Act mandates the managing agency ‘preserve wilderness character’
even if it acts to further other enumerated purposes.” Echoing other
decisions in the Ninth Circuit, the court noted, “when there is a conflict
between maintaining the primitive character of the area and between any
other use, the general policy of maintaining the primitive character must
be supreme.”



“This ruling reaffirms that Wilderness wasn’t designated by Congress to
serve as a staging area for agency manipulation,” said Wilderness Watch
staff attorney Dan Brister. “The court recognized what the Act
requires—wilderness areas must remain self-willed.”


“With rapidly mounting pressures on our most protected landscapes, Judge
Molloy’s opinion marks an essential line in the sand for Wilderness,” said
Dana Johnson, attorney and Policy Director for Wilderness Watch. “In
Wilderness, restraint is a core statutory imperative.”

A copy of Judge Molloy’s Order is available here:
https://wildernesswatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Molloy_Buffalo_Creek_Order_10_23_2025.pdf


Wilderness Watch <https://wildernesswatch.org/>, headquartered in Missoula,
Montana, is the leading national organization whose sole focus is the
preservation and proper stewardship of lands and rivers included in the
National Wilderness Preservation System.

*Contact:*
George Nickas, Executive Director, Wilderness Watch, 406-531-2355,
gnickas at wildernesswatch.org



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