BOZEMAN, Mont. – Officials with the Custer Gallatin National Forest announced on Friday that Stage 1 Fire Restrictions have been implemented on all national forest lands within the Sioux Ranger District, which extends between Carter County in Montana and Harding County in South Dakota.

Seven long years ago the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, with the support of local residents, took the Forest Service to federal court to halt the Hanna Flats logging, road-building, and burning project on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest in northern Idaho. Through a long and winding legal saga the good news — for grizzly bears, old-growth forests, and the local populace which strongly opposed the deforestation — is that a federal appeals court just ruled for the Alliance.