Federal officials and an environmental group have settled a lawsuit over a Kettle Range timber project’s potential impacts on Canada lynx. The Kettle Range Conservation Group and the Colville National Forest finalized an agreement last week that ends a lawsuit over the Bulldog Project, a combination of logging and prescribed burning the agency had planned on about 13,600 acres in the Kettle Range and a nearby area known as the Wedge. The Kettle Range Conservation Group sued over the project in 2023, arguing that it would damage important habitat for lynx, which have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 2000. The suit raised concerns with a 2020 update to the agency’s lynx analysis units, which shrank the area protected as habitat for the snow-loving big cats. In the settlement agreement filed last week, the Forest Service agreed to return to its previous lynx unit boundaries and to not authorize timber work within the units, both old and new.