Federal foresters must rethink plans to log a patch of old-growth spruce forest near Capitol Reef National Park, thanks to a ruling by a federal appeals court Friday.
    The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said the Fishlake National Forest must, under its own agency rules, count bellwether species in the planned logging area to ensure the forest and the wildlife that depend on it stay healthy.
    Fishlake officials were not available to comment on the ruling late Friday. Forest staff originally approved the 15,000-acre Thousand Lakes timber sale in 2001.
    But the Utah Environmental Congress, a Salt Lake City-based environmental group, opposed the plan. The group said the forest had not looked at reasonable alternatives and had not examined "management indicator species."
    Those species are plants and animals that - for good or bad - reflect the surrounding environment's overall well-being. In the Thousand Lakes area, the five indicator species include the northern goshawk, which suggest the general health of old-growth forest, and the three-toed woodpecker, which reflects the adequacy of housing for other birds.
    Kevin Mueller, of the Utah Environmental Congress, said the Forest Service had made "guesstimates" and not head counts, so the agency did not have a clear picture of what might happen to the Thousand Lakes forest ecology if logging went forward as planned.
    His group had been monitoring the proposal since 1998 and lost an appeal to rework it three years later. A U.S. District Court dismissed the case against the logging plan in 2003.
    "This is great news," Mueller said of Friday's ruling. "The Forest Service was literally arguing these regulations don't matter, and it sounds like the 10th Circuit didn't buy that."
    Under the ruling, the Forest Service will have to reconsider its assertion that rare species won't be harmed by the timber sale and measure the population trends of indicator species. The lower court was ordered to make sure terms of the reassessment are carried out correctly.