Utah
Environmental Congress:
In The News
Suit filed to halt Uintas timber sale
Salt Lake Tribune
Published February 1, 2005
The Utah Environmental Congress and High Uintas Preservation Council have filed a lawsuit against the Ashley National Forest to halt a large timber sale near the eastern ridgeline of the Uinta Mountains. The suit, filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court for Utah, claims that the 9.2 million board-foot transaction, known as the Trout Slope West timber sale, will remove some of the most valuable old growth forest left in the heavily forested eastern Uintas. "High value deer and elk summer range and hiding cover will be destroyed at the landscape level by this timber sale," UEC Executive Director Kevin Mueller said in a statement. "Downstream water quality is already impaired, and increased erosion from this timber sale will only further harm water quality," he said. The groups also say that old growth standards have been violated, claiming that Ashley National Forest failed to do required inventories of old growth to determine if it would meet standards after cutting in the approved areas.
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The Utah Environmental Congress and the High Uintas Preservation Council filed a lawsuit last week in federal court to stop the Trout Slope West timber sale -- a 9.2-million-board-foot sale big enough to fill about 8,500 log trucks. The sale is scheduled to take place in August.
"They're going to decimate hundreds, if not thousands, of acres of forest," Utah Environmental Congress spokesman Kevin Mueller said. "It will damage the habitat for any species that need old, secure forest."
The area provides key habitat for elk, deer, goshawk, three-toed woodpecker and lynx. already dotted with patches of 40-acre clear-cuts.
