No Faith In Trees

Sun., March 5, 2000

Staff

Environment

A federal judge recently threw out a loggers’ lawsuit that claimed the Forest Service was being influenced by a nature-based religion.

U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum in Minneapolis said the case had no merit and threatened to sanction the loggers’ lawyer, Stephen Young.

The loggers’ lawsuit, filed last fall, claimed followers of the philosophy of “deep ecology,” which regards the natural world as sacred, were dictating Forest Service policy.

That philosophy, the lawsuit maintained, amounts to a religion. And that means the Forest Service has violated the First Amendment prohibition on government favoring or endorsing one religion over another, it claimed.

The lawsuit asked Rosenbaum to stop the environmentalists and the government from limiting access to timber in national forests unless they could prove they were acting for nonreligious reasons. It also sought $600,000 in damages to make up lost business.

The judge essentially told the environmentalists to keep the faith.

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