Activists win on three counts in forest logging challenge
Environmentalists call decision significant victory for wildlife
By Joe Baird, The Salt Lake Tribune, March 23, 2007
A federal appeals court has issued a split decision in an environmental group's challenge of six logging projects in four Utah national forests.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals this week agreed with the Utah Environmental Congress that the U.S. Forest Service failed to comply with federal environmental laws on three of the projects, all located in southern Utah.
But the court upheld the agency on the other three projects at the northern end of the state.
Utah Environmental Congress executive director Kevin Mueller calls the decision a significant victory for the preservation of wildlife habitat in Utah forests.
"It is a split decision. But these projects involve about 40 million board feet of timber. The three projects we won on would have logged 31 million board feet. So a little over three-quarters of the logging was stopped. The conditions on the ground are pretty favorable," Mueller said.
The Utah Environmental Congress prevailed in stopping two timber projects on the Manti-LaSal National Forest - including the large South Manti timber sale that would have totaled 25 million board feet - and another on the Dixie National Forest.
The court upheld two Forest Service logging projects on the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, and another on the Uinta National Forest, totalling just over 9 million board feet.
Erin O'Connor, spokeswoman for the Forest Service's Intermountain Region, said Thursday that agency attorneys were still reviewing the ruling and had no comment.
Generally speaking, the environmental group challenged Forest Service regulations crafted in 2000 that require the agency use only the "best available science" in making logging project decisions, rather than the more stringent regulations that date back to the early 1980s.
In the case of the three southern Utah projects, the Forest Service was bound to the older rules because the individual forest plans predate the 2000 changes.
The northern Utah proposals were upheld because those forest plans were updated in 2003.
In each case, the Utah Environmental Congress challenged the agency's analysis of what are called "management indicator species" that serve as proxies for the larger wildlife habitat in each forest.
The court found the analysis wanting in the three southern Utah projects.
jbaird@sltrib.com
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* Correspondent ROBERT BOSCOWITZ contributed to this report.