Lawsuit Filed To Stop Logging

Conservationists filed a lawsuit Wednesday to try to block the Forest Service from logging centuries-old trees in Idaho that were targeted for cutting under a controversial salvage timber law.

The Forest Service removed the logging site from the special salvage program, which is exempt from most environmental safeguards, after Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman issued an order in July restricting use of such exemptions.

But environmentalists charged in the lawsuit that the Forest Service is continuing to mark old-growth ponderosa pine for logging without completing documents required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

“This is the quintessential fraudulent salvage sale,” said Ron Mitchell, president of the Idaho Sporting Congress in Boise, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court there.

“They are continuing to mark about 1,500 trees a day. In one place they already have cut 100 trees. They are only marking old-growth, ponderosa pine. It has nothing to do with forest health,” he said.

Mitchell said the operations in the Deadwood area about 70 miles northeast of Boise are illegal because the law prohibits dedicating resources toward the logging without completing an environmental impact statement.

“Being allowed to continue to develop the huge (timber) sale in violation of the law calls into question the sincerity of the administration and the credibility of the Glickman directive,” he said.

Forest Service officials said Wednesday they are allowed to mark the trees for logging as they prepare the required documents and the actual trees that are cut could change based on public reaction to the documents.

A draft environmental impact statement should be completed next month and a final statement and formal record of decision could be done by January, said Laurie Tippin, the agency’s timber staff officer for the Boise National Forest.

Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas told agency officials in July that logging preparations, including tree marking, may proceed prior to a formal decision notice so the planned action can be clearly displayed to the public, Tippin said.

“Certainly we prefer we mark after a decision is made, but I don’t think there is any legal basis that says in court you have to mark after a decision is made,” added Dave Hessel, national director of timber management at Forest Service headquarters in Washington.

“All you have done is maybe financially you have made a commitment. But you haven’t committed any timber resource,” he said Wednesday.

Tom Woodbury, general counsel for the Idaho Sporting Congress, said the agency is reversing the normal process.

“It seems in conflict to be out there marking trees to be cut but claim they haven’t made any decision to cut the trees,” Woodbury said.

“Their mind was made up a long time ago. They are just trying to justify what they are doing with environmental documentation. That is not what NEPA (the law) requires. It says you consider the impact first.”