Center for Biological Diversity ecologist Jay Lininger displays the core of 180-year-old ponderosa pine marked for logging at the Jacob Ryan timber sale. CBD photo.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.— The U.S. Forest Service awarded one of the largest-ever tree-cutting contracts in the history of the national forest system today to a timber company represented by a retired Forest Service official. While he was a federal employee, the official was the agency’s liaison to that same company’s timber-sale inquiries in the same region. The contract calls for timber harvesting on approximately 300,000 acres of ponderosa pine in northern Arizona as part of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative, a showcase forest restoration project for the Obama administration under what’s known as “the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act” and program.
Speaking of today’s contract award, Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigns director with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has led the charge to reform logging in the Southwest, said, “The decision stinks of cronyism.”
“Much of the Southwest’s last old growth was liquidated on Marlin Johnson’s watch during his years at the Forest Service—it was wrong then and it’s wrong now, and the fact that Mr. Johnson is wearing a different hat this time underlines that fact,” he continued.
During his tenure as the southwestern region’s silviculturist, Marlin Johnson was one of the agency’s liaisons for Pioneer Forest Products’ timber-sale inquiries; within a year of retirement, in 2008, Johnson began representing Pioneer’s inquiries to the same Forest Service office in which he had worked. Since then, representing Pioneer in Four Forest Restoration Initiative stakeholder meetings with the Forest Service, Johnson has openly pushed to log old-growth trees and forests.
As regional silviculturist Johnson presided over an attempt to loosen regional limits on logging mature and old trees and forests in Arizona and New Mexico without public or environmental review. Without officially changing the forest plans that guide management of the public’s forests, and over the concern of staff and other agencies about lawfulness and impacts to wildlife, the Forest Service’s southwestern regional office under Johnson tried to sharply reduce the amount of mature and old forest the agency is required to leave on the landscape after logging.
The southwestern region has tried to follow this guidance since Johnson’s retirement, and because logging intensities violate wildlife protections in forest plans, several of those timber sales have crumbled under internal review prompted by administrative objections from the Center. In its collaboration on the Four Forests initiative, which has suffered at the hands of regional micromanagement, the Center has warned the Forest Service not to deploy Johnson’s guidance; it’s unclear whether or not the Service will do so. Last week the Center sued the Forest Service for using that guidance at the Jacob Ryan timber sale, which would log old growth trees near Grand Canyon’s north rim.
Pioneer Forest Products, a Montana corporation, was one of four bidders on the contract. Another, Arizona Forest Restoration Products, had advanced a plan solely focused on using small-diameter trees, and signed an historic memo of understanding with conservation groups committing to a common goal of ecological restoration as a step to restoring healthy, fire-maintained forests and native biological diversity.
“Today’s decision, among many other signs, suggests that the Forest Service’s leadership, after all these years and despite mountains of restoration rhetoric to the contrary, remains hopelessly mired in an antiquated age of agricultural forestry.”
The Center for Biological Diversity just keeps on pumping it out. Today, they released this new report (PDF). The Executive Summary is pasted below.
Critics of the Endangered Species Act contend it is a failure because only 1 percent of the species under its protection have recovered and been delisted. The critique, however, is undermined by its failure to explain how many species should have recovered by now. It is a ship without an anchor.
To objectively test whether the Endangered Species Act is recovering species at a sufficient rate, we compared the actual recovery rate of 110 species with the projected recovery rate in their federal recovery plans. The species range over all 50 states, include all major taxonomic groups, and have a diversity of listing lengths.
We found that the Endangered Species Act has a remarkably successful recovery rate:90 percent of species are recovering at the rate specified by their federal recovery plan.
On average, species recovered in 25 years, while their recovery plan predicted 23 years — a 91 percent timeliness accomplishment.
We confirmed the conclusion of scientists and auditors who assert that the great majority of species have not been listed long enough to warrant an expectation of recovery: 80 percent of species have not yet reached their expected recovery year. On average, these species have been listed for just 32 years, while their recovery plans required 46 years of listing.
Many species that have not been listed long enough to reach their recovery goals increased dramatically since being protected by the Endangered Species Act:
California least tern
2,819% increase in nesting pairs
San Miguel island fox
3,830% increase in wild foxes
Black-footed ferret
8,280% increase in the fall population
Atlantic green sea turtle
2,206% increase in nesting females on Florida beaches
El Segundo blue butterfly
22,312% increase in butterflies
While many species are near or above the numeric population goal set by their recovery plan and will likely be delisted in the next 10 to 15 years, others also have strong recovery trends, but will not be delisted for many decades because their recovery plans require that much time to fully secure their fate.
The study’s findings are similar to a 2006 analysis of all federally protected species in the Northeast, which found 93 percent were stabilized or improving since being put on the endangered species list and 82 percent were on pace to meet recovery goals.
When judged in the light of meeting recovery plan timelines for recovery, the Endangered Species Act is remarkably successful. Few laws of any kind can boast a 90 percent success rate.
From the Center for Biological Diversity’s Press Release:
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit against the northern region of the Forest Service today for withholding documents about cave closures and other measures in Idaho and Montana that could reduce risk of transmission of a disease that is wiping out bats across the eastern United States and is fast spreading west.
The malady, known as white-nose syndrome, has killed nearly 7 million bats, from Nova Scotia to Missouri, over the past six years. So far the agency’s northern region has failed to enact any regulations to stop cave visitors from spreading the disease to healthy bat populations.
“Forest Service officials have utterly failed to protect bats in the northern Rockies from white-nose syndrome by creating common-sense restrictions on human access to caves,” said Mollie Matteson, a bat specialist with the Center. “This lack of action is in sharp contrast to three other regions of the Service that have all closed caves to people. Adding insult to injury, the agency’s northern region is refusing to release documents related to its evaluation of the risk of the horrific illness spreading there.”
Check out the entire press release for some interesting information about white-nose syndrome…with even more info over here at SaveOurBats.
Above is a video from the Buffalo Field Campaign of a recent helicopter bison hazing operation. The video clearly shows the Montana Department of Livestock’s helicopter hazing bison – and other wildlife, including grizzly bears – on Forest Service land, as well as private land surrounding Yellowstone National Park. According to BFC, in this specific taxpayer-funded helicopter hazing incident, buffalo were hazed for nearly eight hours, up to ten miles on a hot, dry day, with no rest or water; no grazing, nursing or breaks were offered.
Below is the press release from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in response to the judge’s restraining order:
After hearing arguments at earlier today, Federal District Court Judge Charles C. Lovell granted the Alliance for the Wild Rockies’ request for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to halt the use of helicopters to haze bison back into Yellowstone National Park. The Alliance successfully contended that the low-level overflights harassed grizzly bears in violation of the Endangered Species Act.
“We’re overjoyed at the ruling,” said Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “It’s well-known science that low-level overflights by helicopters ‘harm and harass’ grizzly bears in violation of the National Forest Planning Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act,” Garrity said. “The Yellowstone grizzly bear is currently listed as a ‘Threatened Species’ under the Endangered Species Act and the Yellowstone bison-hazing flights over occupied grizzly bear habitat are within the designated Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone.”
“We provided Judge Lovell with video footage proving that Yellowstone grizzlies flee in terror when low-level helicopters come into their habitat,” Garrity added. “According to the Forest Service’s and National Park Service’s own scientific literature review, helicopters cause grizzly bears to panic and flee ‘in nearly all cases’ and the bears never become tolerant of helicopters, even with infrequent exposure.”
The helicopter hazing operation began last Thursday by state and federal agents. According to Yellowstone Park spokesman Dan Hottle, the hazing was “overly aggressive” and pushed more than 320 bison a full two miles into the park. The Park had requested that no more than 150 bison be hazed at any one time and that they be allowed to graze on the way. “We just wanted to get their heads pointed in the right direction, let them learn their surroundings and let them be bison,” Hottle told reporters last week.
Park managers also sent a request to Governor Brian Schweitzer asking him to suspend all hazing operations for the remainder of the week, but the state continued the helicopter hazing on Friday and testified that they would continue such operations in the future.
The Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council also passed a resolution on May 1st asking Governor Schweitzer to immediately cease harassing wild buffalo, allow them to return to summer ranges by following their own instincts in their own time, and urging the U.S. government and State of Montana to recognize their trust responsibility to Treaty obligations to provide for viable populations of wild, migratory buffalo in their native habitat.
“Grizzlies once occupied an area from Canada to Mexico and from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean,” Garrity said. “Now their territory is limited to small, isolated parts of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho basically, National Parks and Wilderness Areas. The helicopters cause the grizzlies to flee from their habitat into areas where they are much more likely to be killed.”
Judge Lovell’s Order says: “It is hereby ordered that Defendants, and each, all, and any of them are hereby temporarily restrained from conducting further bison helicopter hazing operations in the targeted Hebgen Basin area pending further order of this Court.”
The Wildlife News has finally obtained all of the records of documented mortality for wolves from April 1, 2011 up to April 1, 2012. This information tells a grim story about what the toll of handing over management to the State of Idaho has been on the Idaho wolf population. All told, based on some estimates made using the data, under state management, 721 wolves, or 59% of the wolves, were killed in the year running from April, 2011 – April, 2012. Even if you use only documented mortality, without estimating additional, unreported illegal take or other causes of mortality, then 492 wolves, or 48% of the wolves, in Idaho were killed.
I got an email last night from a Christopher Risch, who just produced this short film on the effort to Save Stadium Woods – a rare fragment of old growth forest that supports white oaks over 300 hundred years old – on the campus of Virginia Tech. The film is well-done, inspirational and raises important philosophical questions about development and the loss of habitat.
Here’s some more information about the issue.
Hidden behind Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium is an 11 acre tract of forest known as ‘Stadium Woods’. This woodland is a rare fragment of old growth forest that supports white oaks over 300 hundred years old. Stadium Woods is a living ecosystem and wildlife habitat that provides vital ecological functions, aesthetic and social benefits, and is a migration sanctuary for bird species from south and central America.
The Virginia Tech football program has proposed to clear a 3-5 acre portion of this old growth forest in order to build a 100,000 sq. ft., 90 ft. tall, $25 million, indoor practice field. We do not oppose the construction of this practice facility. However, we do believe that the proposed structure can be constructed elsewhere. The Friends of Stadium Woods are asking that you consider signing the petition below to help us save this one last remaining remnant of old growth forest. Visit the Stadium Woods website to learn more.
Four conservation groups filed a petition with the U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday to list the black-backed woodpecker under the Endangered Species Act in the Sierra Nevada, Oregon’s Eastern Cascades and the Black Hills of eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota.
In addition to fire suppression, the groups contend post-fire salvage logging combined with commercial thinning of green forests is eliminating what little remains of the bird’s habitat, mostly in national forests where it has no legal protection.
“Intensely burned forest habitat not only has no legal protection, but standard practice on private and public lands is to actively eliminate it,” the petition said. “When fire and insect outbreaks create excellent woodpecker habitat, salvage logging promptly destroys it.”
Chad Hanson, executive director the Earth Island’s John Muir Project based in Cedar Ridge, Calif., filed the petition Wednesday with the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento. Co-petitioners are the Center for Biological Diversity based in Tucson, Ariz., the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in Fossil, Ore., and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, Wyo.
Hanson, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Davis, said the black-backed woodpecker has been eating beetles in fire-killed stands of conifer forests for millions of years and specifically in North American forests for “many thousand years — since the last Ice Age.”
“Now, it’s very rare,” he said. The best science suggests there are fewer than 1,000 pairs in Oregon and California, and fewer than 500 pairs in the Black Hills, the petition said.
“Such small populations are at significant risk of extinction, especially when their habitat is mostly unprotected and is currently under threat of destruction and degradation,” the document said.
Richard Hutto, a biology professor and director of the Avian Science Center at the University of Montana, has been doing post-fire research since the early 1990s. He said it would be difficult to find a forest-bird species more restricted to a single vegetation cover type than the black-backed woodpecker is to early post-fire conditions.
The California State Fish and Game Commission agreed in December to add the woodpecker to the list of species that are candidates for protection under the California Endangered Species Act. State Commissioner Michael Sutton said a two-year review of the bird’s status is warranted because some Forest Service plans allow “100 percent salvage logging of burned areas, which is the preferred habitat of this species.”
Basin Creek is a headwater tributary of the Little Lost River drainage in Idaho. It was home to bull trout and had a series of wet meadows which are in the process of eroding away and becoming biological wastelands.
Western Watersheds Project staff and supporters visited this stream in late 2008 along with the Salmon Challis National Forest District Ranger, Diane Weaver. It was in the process of severe erosion at that time and she was embarrassed enough to authorize an exclosure to keep cattle out of the stream….
Over the weekend I, Brian Ertz, and his kids visited the same spot and found that cattle had been in the exclosure last year, as evidenced by the utilization of the grass and the numerous cow pies that littered the area. The stream had also cut an additional 5 feet down into the soft, riparian sediments that were deposited over centuries, and the head cut had moved higher up the meadow.
The stream and the meadow are dying. Sediments are eroding into the stream below and the head cut is moving upstream slowly but surely. The lower stretches of the stream are drying out because the water table is lower….
So often people and agencies advocate for these types of exclosures around sensitive stream areas but once they are built they fail to take another look. Exclosures usually end up turning into enclosures for cattle, and, rather than keep cattle out of an area, they keep them in because, frankly, it is exactly the type of area that cattle like to be.
It is not an uncommon experience for us to find exclosures that have had trespassing cattle or contain the offending animals themselves. It also not uncommon to see accelerated degradation occurring to these areas when they are not properly maintained or monitored. The fences keep other, native wildlife out and, in some circumstances end up killing sage grouse that collide into them. They don’t work, and agencies are foolish to depend on them.
Visit The Wildlife News’ site for the full story, as well as a nice slideshow from the area.
Hanging out in the Goose timber sale on the Willamette National Forest, Oregon. Photo by forester Roy Keene.
Update: According to Cascadia Forest Defenders: “On Sunday April 22, in celebration of ‘Earth Defense Day’ and in solidarity with Occupy the Trees, Cascadia Forest Defenders installed a tree sit in the Goose Project timber sale known as ‘Golden.'”
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The Goose timber sale on the Willamette National Forest has been discussed on this blog before. This week, the Goose got some more press as forester Roy Keene wrote an opinion piece in the Eugene Weekly.
The Goose Timber Sale near McKenzie Bridge is a large Forest Service logging operation posed as a beneficial project for the forest and the people. But local people aren’t buying the sales pitch. They say this giant timber sale will, in truth, be as bad for the forest as it will for them….The reality disconnect of this 38-million-board-foot timber grab reducing wildfire bothers many forest-savvy locals as much as the coming war zone. McKenzie Bridge residents don’t look forward to day-long droning of chainsaws, the roar of jet helicopters, loaded trucks rumbling by in swirling dust or the increase in wildfire danger from summer logging operations….
Instead of logging large trees from distant upland slopes, remove small trees and excess vegetation around residences and thin forest understories along roads. Contract smaller, less-mechanized, but equally effective fuel reduction projects locally. Quit subsidizing distant mega-mills with huge helicopter and skyline logging operations at a loss to the public. Instead, redirect these subsidies toward activities like putting steel roofing on vulnerable community buildings and creating ponds for wildlife that would serve simultaneously as water points for future fire fighting.
The Goose Timber Sale does one thing really well. It highlights the inherent dishonesty, inequity and wastefulness of the archaic federal timber sale program. As one citizen said, “It looks as if you’re going to turn me into a 67-year-old tree sitter with this Goose Project. Bad news for us all!”
Just down the valley a piece, the Salem Weekly also took a look at the Goose timber sale with this article:
Conflict is building between the U.S. Forest Service and residents of a small community along the McKenzie River over a logging plan. Jerry Gilmour, a part-time resident of the McKenzie Bridge community, located in the Willamette National Forest, was astonished to learn in early February that 2134 acres there were about to be commercially logged and 588 acres “non-commercially thinned” by the Forest Service (USFS). Research into the matter left Gilmour angrier as he learned how the Goose Project, as the USFS calls it, came about….
According to critics, the main problems are as follows:
1 – The only warning for the large project was a small legal notice among many others in a Eugene newspaper –more than 50 miles from McKenzie Bridge – in 2010.
2 – The 45-day public comment period passed in 2010.
3 – The USFS chose to log mature forests in riparian reserves where logging is prohibited, and also to log mature trees which provide habitat for the spotted owl, a threatened species.
4 – Despite the fact that the project is located within a major watershed, involves critical habitat and the destruction of old growth trees, the USFS did not prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, but only an abbreviated document called an Environmental Assessment (EA).
5 – In a 2011 notice informing residents of a boundary line survey last year, the USFS did not mention a word about the logging project.
…Gilmour says he quickly learned the project was “massive,” including road-building and spraying of herbicides. It means the cutting of enough timber to fill 9,000 logging trucks in an area rich with elk deer, grey fox, black bear, bobcats and cougars.
Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild also objects to calling the project primarily fire protection. Heiken told Salem Weekly, “900 acres of the sale have nothing to do with fire risk reduction because they are older forests that have most of their fuel suspended high above the ground.” Heiken says logging will actually increase hazard on these 900 acres of mature forest….
Gilmour remains undaunted. “We are hoping that the USFS will do the right thing… put the brakes on and redesign this project with the good of the community, the wildlife and the forest in mind rather than the timber company’s bottom line.” He is “absolutely” in favor of the possible lawsuit against the USFS. “Litigation may be the only real way to bring this madness to a screeching halt.”
According to Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, all of the trees in this picture that are not painted orange will be cut down as part of the Bozeman Watershed logging project. Photo by Cottonwood Environmental Law Center.
A copy of the complaint can be found here. Meanwhile, a copy of the press release from the plaintiffs is printed below and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle’s article can be found here.
Weekend Update: An attorney with the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center – who happens to live directly next to the Bozeman Watershed logging project area – provided this very enlightening comment over the weekend, which deserves to be highlighted here:
I helped write the administrative appeal for the enviro groups on the first round of this. We won on soils issues. I submitted a FOIA request for the project record on the BMW project back in 2010.
Here is language from the agency’s hydrologist that I found in an internal document:
The BMW implemented assumes that the BMW treated acres are totally within
the wildfire area so the reduced %>natural figures are probably an over estimation of potential sediment reduction since the wildfires would burn areas outside of BMW treatment boundaries and not all areas within BMW treatment areas would be subjected to wildfire.
Bottom line is that the BMW project, if fully implemented, could result in a modest reduction in sediment yields from a moderate to large size wildfire in either watershed. Since the sediment standard is 30% over natural for each drainage the resulting sediment yields would still be well over standard and pose a challenge to the Bozeman Municipal Water Treatment Plant.
Mark T. Story
Hydrologist
Gallatin National Forest
PO 130 Bozeman, Mt
59771
406-587-6735 [email protected]
This project is particularly troubling for me because it is nearly adjacent to my home, which is in Cottonwood Canyon, the drainage west of Hyalite. The agency is seeking to log in Cottowood. How is sediment going to be reduced by logging in a different drainage that is six miles away from a reservoir? I bowhunt for deer and elk in the Cottonwood side of the project area. This project will destroy my hunting grounds.
I took photos of the project area, approximately six miles away from the drainage in the Cottonwood side. The photos are on our website: http://cottonwoodlaw.org/work.html
Finally, The Wilderness Society submitted comments against this project years ago. They had a former UM soil scientist working for them that heavily criticized the project. They just aren’t talking about it now because it would be politically unpopular and they are worried about funding.
Bozeman, MT –The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in Federal District Court against two proposed logging and road-building projects. The Bozeman Municipal Watershed (BMW) timber sale is a 10-year logging project which authorizes more than 3,000 acres of logging, including 200 acres within the Gallatin Fringe Inventoried Roadless Area, 1,575 acres of prescribed burning, and 7.1 to 8.2 miles of new road construction. The East Boulder Timber sale would authorize 650 acres of logging and 2.1 miles of new road construction.
“The last thing you want to do in a healthy watershed is bulldoze in 7 miles of new logging roads,” said Michael Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “This is the fifth time the Forest Service has tried to push the Bozeman Watershed timber sale which has been successfully challenged four times since the 90s, including our successful administrative appeal last April. Simply stated, the agency’s proposal breaks a number of laws and this time around is no different.”
The groups also say the two timber sales would log lynx critical habitat, core grizzly bear habitat, and destroy habitat for other old growth dependent species. “The two timber sales do not comply with the best available scientific threshold to maintain open road densities of one mile or less per square mile of habitat in grizzly bear habitat,” Garrity said. “Moreover, the logging and road building will also dump sediment into creeks that contain native westslope cutthroat trout, Montana’s State Fish, which is already listed as a ‘Species of Special Concern’ due to habitat destruction and rapidly declining populations.”
“The Forest Service is determined to force bulldozers, logging trucks and helicopters into the Sourdough Creek, Hyalite Creek and South Cottonwood Creek drainages,” said Steve Kelly. “We are equally determined to protect the outstanding wildlife habitat, water quality and recreational opportunities these federal public lands provide to Bozeman residents and visitors who rightfully expect to encounter nature in a peaceful and quiet forest landscape.”
“Bozeman Creek and Hyalite Creek are already listed as ‘impaired,’ meaning they’re not in compliance with state water quality standards or the provisions of the federal Clean Water Act,” Kelly explained. “Yet, despite an already degraded aquatic environment, this project will increase sediment loads in the streams both during and after logging. Sediment sources from past logging projects should be cleaned up first to protect both native westslope cutthroat trout and Bozeman’s drinking water supply from harmful sediment pollution.”
“The supreme irony of this project is that while Montana’s fish and wildlife agency is spending tons of money struggling to recover the population of this native fish and keep it from being listed as an Endangered Species, the federal government is promoting the primary cause of its decline — more logging and sedimentation in its remaining range,” concluded Kelly.
Sara Jane Johnson, PhD., is the Director of the Native Ecosystems Council and a former Gallatin National Forest wildlife biologist. Johnson contends the Forest Service is converting its emphasis for both areas to fuels management, which violates the agency’s own Forest Plan.
“The Forest Service loves fuels management because it promotes logging – and now, apparently nothing else matters,” Johnson said, noting that the federal agency is ignoring the adverse impacts the timber sales will have on water quality, fish, wildlife, and recreation. “The Bozeman watershed timber sale is scheduled to last 10 years. What that means is that the people of Bozeman are going to have to deal with logging trucks, road building and helicopters in their favorite back yard recreation area for the next decade.”
Johnson also says that the increase in road density will adversely affect grizzly bears and lynx, which violates the Endangered Species Act. “Under the Gallatin National Forest Service’s lynx conservation strategy, 55,000 acres of lynx critical habitat can be logged before they claim there is any impact to lynx, “ Johnson continued. “This is an insane, irrational extinction strategy, not a recovery strategy. The government is supposed to work to protect lynx critical habitat, not destroy it.”
“If we want to recover the grizzly bear and lynx and remove them from the Endangered Species list, they need secure habitat on public land,” Johnson explained. “Otherwise they will be forced onto private land where they often end up dead.”
“The Forest Service is also ignoring all road density standards for grizzly bears” Johnson concluded. “The last place the agency should build more roads is in critical lynx habitat and occupied grizzly bear habitat – especially when it is also Bozeman’s municipal watershed.”
The East Boulder project is being litigated for many of the same reasons, Garrity explained, “except in addition to more road building, the Forest Service also blatantly ignores its own Forest Plan requirements to preserve big game winter range standards.”
“The Project area contains important winter range for mule deer and moose,” Garrity continued. “The Forest Plan requires the Forest Service to manage big game winter range to meet the forage and cover needs of deer, elk, moose, and other big game species. Winter range provides important canopy cover that intercepts snow, blocks wind, and reduces snow crusting, making movement for big game less difficult.”
“The elimination of hundreds of acres of winter range in the project area coupled with the disturbance effects of winter logging will negatively affect the already below-average population of mule deer in violation of the Forest Plan, the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act,” Garrity concluded. “We have been involved in every step of this process, made the agency aware of our concerns and it continues to push the projects forward. So now, for the good of the fish, wildlife, big game and water quality, we’re forced to take them to court. It’s not something we prefer to do, but in the end, judicial review is part and parcel of our system of government and we are using it to challenge the government’s actions exactly as it was intended.”
