Appeals Court Asked To Overturn Logging Decision

Timber industry leaders went back to court Tuesday to try to generate more logging on federal lands in the Northwest, appealing a recent federal ruling upholding the legality of President Clinton’s forest protection plan.

“The plan is illegal,” said Ralph Saperstein, vice president of the Northwest Forestry Association based in Portland.

“We can’t sit by and allow the administration to fail to bring a balanced solution to the table,” he said.

The association was among 16 plaintiffs who filed papers in San Francisco on Tuesday asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down the ruling earlier this year by U.S. District Judge William Dwyer of Seattle.

It also was filing papers in U.S. District Court here asking Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to reopen the industry’s case regarding logging on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

Dwyer ruled that the administration could move forward with its plan to log an estimated 1 billion board feet of timber annually in the region over 10 years - about one-fifth the peak levels of the 1980s on the same national forests in Oregon, Washington and California.

The ruling capped a three-year legal battle in which conservationists originally won an injunction from Dwyer banning logging in national forests with spotted owls. Conservationists charged the government with violating environmental laws.

Most of the environmental plaintiffs in that original case, including the National Audubon Society and The Wilderness Society, accepted Dwyer’s ruling and agreed not to appeal it.

However, one of the plaintiffs, the Native Forest Council, also is appealing the ruling in the 9th Circuit, arguing that Clinton’s plan still allows too much logging in violation of federal law.

“We’re glad to have them join us,” Tim Hermach, executive director of the Native Forest Council, said Tuesday about the new industry appeal.

“But we are confident the outcomes will not be as they desire. Even the dimmest ideologue in the country is going to come down on the side of preserving what little remains,” he said.

Saperstein said Dwyer’s ruling “basically relegates timber production to a residual output of the national forests.

“He ignores the multiple-use mandate of the National Forest Management Act and puts species viability as the overriding concern of the national forests,” he said.

In Washington, D.C., Judge Jackson last year ruled that Clinton’s forest plan had been created in violation of open meetings laws, but that he would not rule on any remedies until Dwyer had completed the case in Seattle.

“We are asking Judge Jackson to lift the stay on our case against the BLM portion of the plan,” Saperstein said.

Saperstein said the BLM has “ignored the timber production mandate” of the Oregon & California Lands Act in managing BLM lands. He said that act requires a minimum of 500 million board feet of timber to be sold annually on BLM lands, compared with the 211 million board feet estimated in the coming year by the BLM.