Jeff Juel, executive director of the Missoula-based Ecology Center, said the lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court here challenges nine logging projects that forest managers have approved since June 2004. Juel said the Forest Service has ignored the cumulative effects of those projects and others over the years, and has failed to follow its own monitoring guidelines.

The group is asking a federal judge to block the projects from moving forward.

‘‘We want to put an end to this pattern of abuse on the Kootenai National Forest that has resulted in decades of unsustainable logging practices that have harmed clean water, fish habitat, old-growth forests and old-growth dependent wildlife species,’’ Juel said in a written statement. ‘‘The days of Forest Service unaccountability for the over-exploitation of this forest are over.’’

Cami Winslow, the Kootenai forest administrator, said officials received the lawsuit only Thursday and could not comment.

‘‘We’re working with our office of general counsel to review the lawsuit, but we cannot comment at this time because we’re in litigation,’’ she said.

The Ecology Center has been critical of management of the forest in the past. In a previous lawsuit, a federal judge agreed with the group in 2003 that the forest was not in compliance with its own management plan because it had not done an inventory of old-growth timber, and had not monitored wildlife species that depend on old-growth habitat.

Juel said a ‘‘rider’’ attached by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., to an appropriations bill later that year essentially made the judge’s order moot.

Juel said the nine projects addressed in the latest lawsuit would allow cutting of about 90 million board feet of timber on 30 square miles of forest land.