HELENA, Montana — Two conservation groups and the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have reached a settlement on a lawsuit over a a 20-year logging and burning project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, the plaintiffs said. Native Ecosystems Council and Alliance for the Wild Rockies said the Middleman Project that they stopped over 110 miles of road construction and reconstruction in the forest and halted over 5,000 acres of commercial logging in lynx and grizzly habitat. …The project, approved in 2021, was meant to reduce wildfire fuels and improve forest health and rangeland habitat conditions, forest officials said. It was also designed to maintain and improve water quality and aquatic habitat through a variety of methods including logging. The conservation groups sued in September, saying the project violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.