A nonprofit membership organization focused on protecting lands, waters and wildlife has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in an effort to stop the construction of an ATV trail in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.

    The Greater Yellowstone Coalition filed the suit over the Winschell Dugway ATV Trail System on Tuesday. The nearly eight-mile trail would be located in Bonneville County, on Caribou Mountain east of Gray’s Lake Wildlife Refuge and northeast of Soda Springs, and could be constructed as early as the fall of 2013.

    But GYC officials are hoping to stop the construction of the trail they say could negatively impact wildlife. And they argue that the decision to build it violated the National Environmental Policy Act and National Forest Management Act.

    “The Forest Service cannot say for certain that Caribou Mountain’s fragile landscape can support intensive ATV use. So, in order to approve this project, the agency chose to ignore the impacts of some of the most problematic portions of the project — a decision that is both environmentally unsustainable and legally unsound,” Shiloh Hernandez, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, which is representing GYC, said in a news release.

    GYC officials say the trail would cross important fish and wildlife habitats, and ATV use could cause erosion and landslides as well as muddy waters where native Yellowstone cutthroat trout live. (The fish are not listed as endangered, but GYC officials say the species is struggling and needs protection.)

    “The impacts on native fish, water quality, and wildlife from erosion on steep and unstable slopes would be irreversible,” Andrea Santarsiere, GYC’s legal associate in Idaho Falls, said in the news release.

    “Additionally, the adjacent recommended wilderness area (which is a popular place for elk hunting) would be affected by noise and fumes from the ATVs running along the area’s boundary. This sensitive area of the forest is just not suitable for an ATV trail.”

    GYC officials decided to file the lawsuit on Tuesday after their efforts to appeal the decision earlier this year failed, Santarsiere said.

    U.S. Forest Service officials declined to comment on the lawsuit because they hadn’t had a chance to review it.

    Jack Isaacs, district ranger for the Soda Springs Ranger District in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, made the decision to build the trail earlier this year after reviewing environmental and impact studies. In that decision, which he signed in April, he said that the project met all of the applicable federal, state and local laws focused on environmental protection, and would improve motorized trail opportunities and provide a unique recreation experience for visitors wanting to learn more about the area’s mining history. The trail would utilize old mining roads.

    He also said in the decision that Bonneville County — under the direction of the Forest Service — would be responsible for maintaining the trail and bridges that would be constructed as part of the project, and would be required to remove downfall from the trail, repair slides, maintain rolling dips and report any illegal user created trails.