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It’s a funny thing about environmental groups. The more they claim to do for forest health, the unhealthier the forests become. Lawsuits and appeals of timber projects and sales go on and on, while trees die and go unharvested, while combustibles continue to pile up on the forest floors.
Legal wrestling matches drag on (and on), and conflagrations break out every year. The result? Blighted land, squandered taxpayer dollars and a wasted resource.
The controversy touched a new height in absurdity recently, when a federal district court judge effectively slapped down a U.S. Forest Service policy designed to promote work that reduces the risk of wildfires. Two local sales already evaluated for positive and negative environmental impacts were stopped dead in their tracks.
The Forest Service policy, adopted in 2003, exempts from appeal certain logging projects on 1,000 acres or fewer, and also prescribed burning on 4,500 or fewer acres. The policy is designed to allow some constructive, productive work to proceed in a timely manner.
Projects approved under this policy require less paperwork and bureaucratic maneuvering than larger undertakings. But that doesn’t mean the projects are exempt from standards. Potential harm to the ecosystem must be studied.
That seems fair enough. Still, the Sierra Club has been fighting the policy since 2004. The club argues the policy violates the Environmental Protection Act. It also holds that the Forest Service should be required to study the effects of several such projects in close proximity.
The case has been up and down the ladder of jurisprudence. The club’s initial lawsuit was rejected, but in December 2007, the Court of Appeals reversed that decision and sent the matter back to the district court.
Now, an injunction has halted the New California timber sale in Baker County and the Simmons sale in Wallowa County. The former was 60 percent complete, the latter 50 percent. Had they been 75 percent complete, they would have been allowed to continue.
Still ahead, more wrangling, more delay, over these and other projects designed to reduce wildfire danger. The Forest Service is considering options. The best appears to be the writing of an environmental assessment for each sale. That would exempt the sales from the injunction.
It’s too bad for the need of additional hoops to jump through, months more controversy and argument over something that was not supposed to be appealable in the first place.
For many years, Oregon’s congressional delegation, local government leaders and local Forest Service officials have been trying to find a way to expedite worthy projects. They have pledged to act as good stewards, and it makes sense to give them a chance. Endlessly tying up sales and projects hasn’t benefited the environment, after all.
The latest district court ruling is wrong. There comes a time when federal judges need to stop passing the buck. They need to stand up for what’s right: healthy forests, and the jobs that go with them.
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Opinion 
