SPLIT DECISION IN 10^th CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HALTS MOST LOGGING, ALLOWS REST TO GO FORWARD; FISH/WILDLIFE VIABILITY PROTECTIONS WIN

Utah Environmental Congress (UEC) came out ahead in a split decision issued late yesterday by the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals in a lawsuit filed to stop six logging and road construction projects on four National Forests in Utah.  Originally filed in October 2004, UEC filed this suit against the Wasatch-Cache, Uinta, Manti-La Sal and Dixie National Forests on the grounds that the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) requirements to monitor and maintain viable populations of fish and wildlife were violated, and that the Agency failed to consider the best available science. 

The projects span from northern Utah to southern Utah and include the Bear Hodges II timber sale and East Fork Fire Salvage sale on the Wasatch-Cache N.F.; the White River timber sale on the Uinta N.F.; the South Manti timber sale and East Mountain project on the Manti-La Sal; and the Dark Valley timber sale on the Dixie National Forest.  UEC won on the Manti-La Sal and Dixie National Forest –stopping 31 million board feet of logging- but did not win its challenges on the Wasatch-Cache and Uinta National Forests.

“I am thrilled that we won and stopped the detrimental South Manti Timber Sale … again!” said Kevin Mueller, UEC’s Executive Director, “We stopped this sale in 2002 due to their failure to monitor key Management Indicator Species.  Instead of complying with the Utah District court, the Administration gutted the environmental laws.  By failing to use the best available science this time around the Manti-La Sal continues to refuse to follow even the watered down Forest rules of the Bush Administration.  It’s time for the Forest Service to do a better job at protecting our wildlife, and it’s time to end this lawless logging.”

In the NFMA of 1976 Congress mandated that plant and animal diversity be protected from logging.  Management Indicator Species (MIS) are the management shortcut created by the Regan Administration to meeting this requirement.  Functioning much like each National Forest’s ‘Dow Jones index’ of fish and wildlife population viability MIS are keystone or bellwether species that are selected to represent the larger diversity of each logging area.  In recent years UEC has had a number of successes in court stopping timber sales when the Forest Service fails to track the impacts of logging on its ‘Dow Jones’ MIS indices. 

In response –and at almost the same time as the filing of this lawsuit- the Bush Administration issued a bewildering series of retroactive interpretive regulations that claimed there have been no requirements to monitor and maintain viable fish and wildlife populations on National Forests.  Instead, the rules claim, the only requirement had been to “consider the best available science.”

“When the six logging projects in this case are added up it comes to about 40 million board feet of logging, and the three projects stopped include three quarters of that volume, which is enough to stretch a line of full logging trucks bumper to bumper from Temple Square to 106^th South three times over.” said Sarah Tal, Staff Attorney for the Utah Environmental Congress.  “We’ve stopped the most destructive logging here, and protected thousands of acres of forest for the critters.”

Please click here for a map and key that shows the locations of the six projects and National Forests involved in this 10^th Circuit ruling.