U.S. Court OKs Bid to Block Burned Tree Logging, San Francisco Chronicle
March 28, 2006
harvesting of burned trees in the
forest managers have not adequately assessed the effect of the logging
on the
The court also sharply criticized the U.S. Forest Service, saying the
agency is putting potential timber profits ahead of environmental
regulations.
The Earth Island Institute has a strong likelihood of success in its
court challenge to obtain an injunction against the Forest Service's
harvesting plans, according to the ruling by a three-judge panel of the
The ruling reverses a lower court's decision backing the Forest Service.
The San Francisco-based appeals court found the Forest Service in its
logging plans overpredicted how many trees died in wildfires and did not
fully assess how
owls are being considered for the
according to Jim Nickles, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service in
"The likely consequence of the apparent overprediction of tree mortality
is excessive logging. This likely logging, in turn, is likely to produce
adverse effects on the
analyzed" in Forest Service plans, according to the opinion by Judge
William Fletcher.
"We have noticed a disturbing trend in the USFS's recent
timber-harvesting and timber-sale activities," Fletcher said, referring
to other federal lawsuits against the Forest Service.
"It has not escaped our notice that the USFS has a substantial financial
interest in the harvesting of timber in the National Forest ... the USFS
appears to have been more interested in harvesting timber than in
complying with our environmental laws."
Court backs halt on SPI logging, Union Democrat (
By Mike Morris
March 28, 2006
Logging will remain temporarily halted on two
A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that Sierra Pacific Industries cannot log in two sections of the forest damaged by wildfires in 2004.
A lower court in August had denied a request by two environmental organizations to immediately end the logging.
But a federal appeals court judge in January temporarily halted the shipments.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its Friday ruling barred the logging pending ruled the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity are likely to eventually win their lawsuit.
Allowing logging to continue could cause too much damage to the forest while the lawsuit proceeds, the San Francisco-based appeals court ruled.
Many of the trees killed in the fires already have been cut by
Since last year, SPI has hauled wood from burned portions of the forest to its Standard and Chinese Camp mills. The logs are from trees damaged in the Power and Freds fires, which together burned thousands of acres.
"The purpose of removing the trees is to help finance our restoration of that area to its previous condition because waiting for nature would take hundreds of years, and the public likes to see green forests as soon as possible," Mathes said in response to the ruling.
"The trees do lose their value rapidly once they've been killed by the fire, because they're just standing there rotting."
The environmental groups claim in their lawsuit that the U.S. Forest Service used poor science to determine which trees died or are dying because of the fires and failed to compensate for the logging's impact on the
"They really just rushed this project through. They jumped the gun big time on this one. It's a bad project," said Rachel Fazio, an attorney with the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. "It's only a good project for the Forest Service's budget and the timber industry, and that's not appropriate." SPI spokesman Ed Bond said the Redding-based company, along with the Forest Service, was trying to remove dead, fire-damaged trees in order to restore the forest.
"We hate to see dead trees go to waste," he said. "We think the Forest Service did a good job."
Not so, counters Fazio.
"Fire is a natural, restorative, necessary process," she said. "Fire in a forest is not bad. There is no need to log. SPI is a business. Their job is to make money. They are not operating out of the kindness of their hearts."
Bond would not say specifically whether layoffs or lower production levels are possible at the local mills. He did say, however, "the mills need those trees."
He said SPI is looking at new sources of timber, but much of that depends on the weather.
SPI has been allowed to haul an estimated 22 million board-feet — 13 million decked, or stacked, and 9 million on the ground — from the Eldorado National Forest to Tuolumne County's two mills and a Placerville-area mill.
A board foot is an inch-thick, foot-square piece of lumber.
Roughly 30 million board-feet of standing timber from the sales remains uncut, Bond said.
In about two months, lawyers for the environmental groups will either settle with the Forest Service or have their arguments heard before a federal judge, similar to a trial.
The environmental groups are seeking to permanently stop the logging.