Thursday, September 09, 2004
By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press
GRANTS PASS, Oregon — A federal appeals court on Tuesday
blocked logging of old-growth forest scorched in one of the
nation's largest wildfires until a lawsuit brought by environmentalists
is decided, making it unlikely the dead trees can be harvested
before rotting.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
granted an emergency injunction sought by environmentalists
in the two-year battle over one of the biggest federal logging
projects in history.
The blaze burned 500,000 acres in southwestern Oregon in
2002 and was the biggest wildfire in the nation that year.
It has become the focus of an intense political and scientific
debate between the Bush administration and the timber industry
on one side and environmentalists on the other.
The two sides have clashed repeatedly over whether to log
and reforest the millions of acres of national forest that
burn every year or leave them largely to recover on their
own.
"The court's action today gives us a chance to find
some balance here that will actually be good for the forests
and the people in the region, instead of just logging everything
in sight," said Todd True, an attorney representing environmentalists.
The ruling comes a week before environmentalists, the Forest
Service, the timber industry, and Oregon officials were to
begin mediation in an attempt to reach a settlement.
"This plays right into the continuing agenda of the
environmental community to litigate and obstruct lawful and
sound land management practices," said Chris West, vice
president of the American Forest Resource Council, a pro-timber
group.
The timber industry may ask the full 9th Circuit to review
the injunction because the judge's ruling makes logging unlikely
before next spring, when the trees will be worth little after
standing dead for nearly three years, West said.
The injunction covers timber sales on 6,600 acres of old-growth
forest reserves that were designated primarily for fish and
wildlife habitat under the Northwest Forest Plan, the 1994
policy adopted to protect the Northern spotted owl and salmon
from logging.
Lightning started four fires in July 2002 in the Klamath
Mountains that merged into one large blaze. Over the next
two years, the Forest Service plans to sell 370 million board
feet of timber from 19,465 of the burned acres.
Source: Associated Press
|