Litigation

Groups seek protection of Whitebark Pine under the ESA

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The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and WildWest Institute filed a lawsuit yesterday in Federal District Court in Missoula against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in response to the FWS’s July 2011 decision that the whitebark pine is “warranted for listing as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act” but precluded by higher priority actions.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already concluded that whitebark pine faces numerous threats, including climate change, that are so pressing that whitebark pine is in danger of extinction,” said Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “This is the first time the federal government has declared a widespread tree species in danger of imminent extinction from climate change.  Since the Forest Service still has proposals to clearcut whitebark pine, all we’re doing is asking the court to move the listing process along a little faster so we can protect what’s left under the Endangered Species Act.”

The plaintiffs are requesting that the Court declare the agency’s decision is contrary to law, set aside or remand the decision, and compel the agency to promptly set a reasonable date to issue a proposed Endangered Species listing rule for whitebark pine.

Whitebark pine is a slow-growing, longed-life tree with life spans up to 500 years and sometimes more than 1000 years.  Whitebark pine is a keystone — or foundation — species in western North America where it increases biodiversity and contributes to critical ecosystem functions.  Those include providing highly-nutritious seeds for more than 20 different species including Clark’s Nutcracker, grizzly bears, black bears, Steller’s Jay, and Pine Grosbeak.

“People who spend time in the high-country realize that whitebark pine are dying at alarming rates due to impacts associated with climate change,” explained Matthew Koehler, with the WildWest Institute.  “We cannot sit back, do nothing, and watch a critically important component of our high-country ecosystem just disappear and go extinct before our eyes.  This isn’t just about the whitebark pine, but about the future viability of these high country ecosystems, including the species that rely upon that habitat such as grizzly bears and Clark’s Nutcrackers.”

The role the pine seeds play in the ecosystem is fascinating.  Clark’s nutcrackers crack open the pine cones and collect the seeds in specialized throat pouches.  The birds then cache the seeds in small piles in numerous shallow holes on the forest floor.  If the Clark’s nutcrackers, or other wildlife species, don’t come back to eat all the seeds, new trees sprout.  Additionally, red squirrels collect and bury larges caches of whole pine cones in middens.  Grizzly bears unearth the caches, carefully pry off the scales of the pine cones with their claws, and then pull out the seeds with their tongues.  Studies in the Yellowstone National Park area show that grizzly bears obtain one-quarter to two-thirds of their energy from the seeds.  The 30-50% fat content from whitebark pine seeds promotes survival and reproduction of female grizzly bears that rely on this fat not only to hibernate, but also to support lactation.  When pine seeds are plentiful, grizzly bears have more surviving cubs.  And in years when pine seeds are scarce, the result is more conflicts with humans and more dead grizzly bears.

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that climate change will result in the whitebark pine population shrinking to less than 3% of its current U.S. distribution by the end of the century.

Copy of complaint: http://ncfp.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/whitebark_pine_complaint_filed_01-15-13.pdf

Prevent legal quagmire for timber industry: Oregonian Editorial

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Yes, save lots of litigation bucks! I agree with the Oregonian Editorial Board here.
Christmas always reminds me of Dickens, and this case could otherwise grow into one reminiscent of the infamous Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. There are many other, potentially more productive, public works and employment programs we could invest in..

The Supreme Court may now punt rather than ruling on the merits in the case, Tenny says. Environmental groups will respond by challenging the EPA’s new rule in court, and the legal wrangling, once again, will go on and on.

Enter Congress. If the Supreme Court does, in fact, give the case the brush-off, Congress should act quickly on very targeted legislation introduced in both the House and Senate. The companion bills enjoy bipartisan support, including that of Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. Their passage would simply provide firm legal footing for long-standing EPA policy governing logging runoff.

This legislation barely moves the needle on the controversy meter, and it would provide great relief to an important industry in Oregon and many other states. It deserves prompt passage..

The idea of surgical litigation to resolve issues that cause protracted litigation otherwise is a useful one to have in the CREATE toolkit. Speaking of transparency, here is a link to the oral arguments. And a quote suggesting the alternative to legislation is protracted litigation (thanks to Steve Wilent for finding this):

MR. FISHER [for respondents = NEDC]:

But if I might just explain to this Court, I think it will help the conversation if I explain exactly what our case looks like going forward, because we have and will maintain a claim for forward-looking relief for two reasons. One is, for the reason that was mentioned a couple of times in the beginning part of the argument, because we contend that the new rule simply violates the statute, and we have a right to bring a citizen suit for a violation of the Clean Water Act itself, which is to say the language that requires EPA to regulate –

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Is this a –

MR. FISHER: — all discharges associated with industrial activity.

When To Do an EIS for a Regulation?

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EIS’s for regulations can be expensive. Yet it seems like sometimes it’s useful. A concerned citizen might ask, “is there some interagency (say CEQ) guideline as when to do such an investment?” or “is it an artifact of case law and different for each kind of action by each kind of agency?” Sort of a patchwork quilt of court rulings?

My instinct based on common sense would go something like, roadless regulations might make sense to do because there is something that can be projected and analyzed (well, more or less, guessed at, what you might have done, but now won’t do). Planning regulation not so much. Yet the Forest Service spend megabucks analyzing the 2008 and 2012 planning rules. Meanwhile, the EPA “forest” roads regulation has no EIS.

It appears to me that the Planning Rule, is an outlier then. My memory is fading for some of these things, but I think the FS was required to do one as an outcome of a court case. I did find this letter under scoping comments for an EIS for the 2005 Rule, which said it was Citizens for Better Forestry et al. v. USDA.

Can you think of other examples? What would be your “common sense” approach?

Roads Case at Supreme Court Enters Regulatory/Judicial Quagmire

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Maybe it’s time for the third branch to step in and winch this issue out of the muck. Here’s a link.

Also, I find it interesting the Congress asked for an objections rule last year which hasn’t been successful at making it through the rulemaking process.. yet this one was relatively quick.

Here are a few paragraphs on that aspect from Greenwire here (the whole article is worth a read if you have a subscription):

It’s not often that Chief Justice John Roberts is caught by surprise, but he expressed shock yesterday at how quickly U.S. EPA issued a rule that is likely to have a major impact on how a Supreme Court case is decided.

An exchange between the chief justice and federal government lawyer Malcolm Stewart over the administration’s uncharacteristic speediness in drafting and approving the rule cast a spotlight on the murky world of administrative rulemaking. Critics often say it takes much too long for rules to be approved, except in cases where political officials in the White House step in and speed things up.

…

The court debated in some detail whether the rule, which says logging roads should be exempt from Clean Water Act permitting, means a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling finding the opposite should be vacated or whether the case should be dismissed altogether, which would leave the appeals court ruling intact (Greenwire, Dec. 3).

The fact that EPA was planning a rule to address the 9th Circuit decision was known to the justices. In fact, the Obama administration had asked the court not to take up the case back in May on the grounds that EPA was planning to issue a rule (E&ENews PM, May 24).

In a later briefing in the case, in which the administration ended up siding with industry groups and states that wanted the appeals court ruling reversed, the government made it clear it was moving forward with its planned rule.

But what seemed to irk the chief justice was that he didn’t know EPA sent the rule to the White House for approval in November, a move that was reported in Greenwire at the time (Greenwire, Nov. 9).

…

The government lawyer conceded that the stormwater runoff rule “happened more quickly than it usually does” but insisted it was intended to make it easier for the court to decide the case.

“Obviously, it’s suboptimal for the new rule to be issued the Friday before oral argument,” Stewart said. “But it would have been even worse, I think, from the standpoint of the parties’ and the court’s
decisionmaking processes if the rule had been issued a week or two after the court heard oral argument.”

Once we are successful with the People’s Database for the Forest Service, we could start a People’s Database for Federal Rulemaking. This one would have the dates into and out of all agencies for clearance, written comments by clearing agencies and responses by the proposing agency, all open for public review.

Are We Ready for 12-15 Million Per Year? The Chief Speaks in Boise

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From the Idaho Statesman here.

If you think fires have gotten big in the past few years, hold on.

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said Friday that the blazes will only get bigger and that the cost of fighting them could nearly double. But the agency that manages 193 million acres of national forest — including 20 million in Idaho — plans to increase timber sales by 20 percent in the next two years as part of a restoration effort to make communities safer and watersheds more resilient.

Wildfires have burned in excess of 8 million acres six times since 2004, a dramatic increase over the yearly totals seen in the past five decades. But Tidwell told the City Club of Boise that as many as 12 million to 15 million acres will burn annually now because of warming temperatures and drier years.

This comes even as state, tribal and federal agencies put out 98 percent of all the fires that start, Tidwell said. Firefighters jump on those blazes as aggressively as they can, he said.

“It’s that 2 percent that become very large very quickly,” Tidwell said.

Today’s fires are often so ferocious that managers won’t risk putting crews in their path. The thousands of homes that have been built in and on the edges of the national forests have forced managers to shift resources and prompted firefighters to protect communities and lives.

“It has drastically changed the way we fight those fires,” said Tidwell, a forester who grew up in Boise.

Also

Federal budget cuts will make money more scarce, but communities are increasingly taking responsibility, he said. Flagstaff, Ariz., passed a $10 million bond to do forest restoration on private and federal land there.

Experiences in Idaho this year show that fuel-reduction works. On the 340,000-acre Mustang Complex Fire north of Salmon, a logging project in Hughes Creek helped firefighters turn the blaze away from U.S. 93, a critical economic corridor.

“There is no question our restoration work can make a difference,” Tidwell said.

Questions from the audience suggested that many believe the agency is still hindered by lawsuits aimed at stopping timber and salvage sales. But Tidwell said lawsuits are less of a problem today because of collaborative efforts such as the Clearwater Basin Collaborative in north-central Idaho.

Observations on Some Current Cases, and Introducing REAL

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I think we really need to start a group toward reforming environmental conflict resolution as currently carried out through the court system.

We need an acronym.. for the time being, I will use REAL for “Reforming and Enhancing Appeals and Litigation” as it pertains to environment and natural resource disputes, particularly in public lands. Other acronym suggestions are welcome. You all have given me ideas, plus others outside this blog have, for ideas and actions that we may or may not agree to support in terms of:

1) Increasing transparency, public participation, and accountability in the resolution of disagreements involving public lands,

2) Through either direct action, or influencing legislation or Administration policy.

So I will be rounding up some of those ideas in the next few weeks.

I ran across these three pieces that help make my case for action:

1. (Litigation does not addressing the real issue). This story is “Feds file litigation to weaken ranchers’ claim” here. Where’s the best available, or any, “science” for that matter? Nowhere to be seen. It seems to me like conflict resolution folks could have been brought in on this to mediate the real issues, which seem to be 18% reduction, and not the Constitution. Likely to be more cost-effective to the taxpayer and more effective. But there could be history here that I’m not aware of, so those who know more, please speak up.

2. (Litigation does not address the real issue) Thanks to Terry Seyden for this one. This was in Forbes. This is a big enough deal that many folks are involved, including timber industry, and SAF (needed to be transparent about that). The same arguments could be made that this author makes,about other tinier projects, only without the broad base of (financial and other forms of) support.

On December 3, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider who is best suited to set national environmental policy – the experienced scientists and regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency or activist trial lawyers.

..

and

The former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, John Gordon, worries that, “Injecting permit requirements into this [BMP] process will only make the ongoing upgrade of our [environmental protection] methods slower and more expensive, diverting resources from reducing sediment to the legal machinery of permit review and litigation.” “In this case, environmental activists are not on the side of the environment,” he concluded. The EPA agrees; regulators have insisted for decades that permitting was not designed for—and does not work for—forest road runoff even as state forest road BMPs are widely acknowledged to have proven effective and efficient.

When the Supreme Court convenes on December 3rd, the critical question will be whether 35 years of effective regulation from EPA should be surrendered to America’s lawsuit industry.

To be fair, let’s take a look at this fellow’s background here. He is not one of our experienced folks in this area.. still he doesn’t claim that his opinions are a “scientific report.”

3. (Understanding the intricacies of the legal processes is not always easy, plus not addressing the real issue, plus not clear where the scientific information would lead.) Here is a link.

But Monday, U.S. District Court Judge John L. Kane rejected the settlement. At issue is a provision saying if there is a dispute over the implementation of the document, neither side can be found in contempt of court. The judge ruled that provision exceeds the authority of the two sides and could lead to them not reporting violations of the court order.

Tim Ream, attorney for the environmental group, called it a “very esoteric point” and said negotiations continue on reworking the settlement.

Dirt bike groups, who have funded and carried out maintenance work on the trails for years, have blasted the lawsuit as unfairly singling out dirt bike riders from hikers, mountain bike riders and others they say also impact the creek.

“We are not satisfied with the process to date,” said Don Riggle, president of the Colorado Springs-based Trails Preservation Alliance. His is one of three groups representing motorized vehicle riders that have joined the lawsuit as intervenors.

He said he agreed to a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity with the understanding the ban would be in place only for the winter months, until the trails could be realigned, but last week’s settlement differed “in principle.” The document includes no timetable for reopening.

Here’s my information question, if three groups are intervenors, do they get to sit in while the settlement is discussed? To an outsider, seems like they should. Could someone explain how that works? ‘Cause otherwise it looks like a pretty closed door to the public.

Canada (BC) and US (Tongass) Forest Policy Comparisons: Nie and Hoberg

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Check out these videos from Policy Issues in the Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest of North America On April 19, 2012. I thought it was extremely interesting to compare what happens in our system of court-governance compared to Canada’s and the way they work and results in neighboring and connected forests. Props to Bruce Botelho (City and Borough of Juneau) for organizing, moderating and posting such an interesting panel.

In Part 1, Nie and Hoberg compare the governance, processes and products of policy between countries.

In Part 2, Nie and Hoberg are part of a larger panel.

If you only have a small amount of time, about 16 minutes into Part 2 is a discussion of the role of litigation. About 47 minutes in is a discussion of Forest Service culture.

In response to a question, Martin suggests a land law review. I’ve got some links to the Natural Resource Law Center’s of the University of Colorado Law School’s progam, powerpoints and videos of its conference on that topic in 2010. but some appear to be broken so I’ll post those once I contact folks there and get them fixed.

They also touch upon jobs, local communities, and other topics.

One thing of interest to me (there were many) was when Hoberg said that he didn’t feel that 30% protected was “enough” because of the importance of that area. It is interesting how rainforests can be all about old growth and protection, while it is harder to make that same case in areas of frequent fires. Maybe we need two separate ways to think about conservation..clearly delineated so that rainy ideas are not projected onto non-rainy areas and vice versa. Also discussion on collaboration and comparing Alaska and other collaborative efforts, and Martin Nie gives his opinion on the new planning rule.

We hobbyist policy wonks usually don’t have funding to get out and about, and the video plus any discussion here seems like a great way to expand the mind and the dialogue with new ideas. Here is a link to the whole session program. Some of those look interesting as well, would appreciate any comments from folks who have viewed the other sessions.

I’d be interested to hear from you all anything that strikes you about these discussions, and if the contrast between US and Canadian systems provides any thoughts for you about improving our processes in the US.

Owls and Fish and Science, Oh, My!

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Here’s an article on the new critical habitat plan to be posted next week.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. –

The last building block of the Obama administration’s strategy unveiled Wednesday to keep the northern spotted owl from extinction nearly doubles the amount of Northwest national forest land dedicated to protecting the bird by the Bush administration four years ago.
Still, conservation groups that went to court to force the overhaul said key gaps remain, such as an exemption for private forest lands and most state forests.

Following a directive last February from the White House, officials revised the latest plan to make room for thinning and logging inside critical habitat to reduce the danger of wildfire and improve the health of forests.
Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity said it appeared the critical habitat plan and the previously adopted owl recovery strategy were back in line with the Northwest Forest Plan adopted in 1994 to protect owls and salmon.
“In restoring extensive protections on federal lands, today’s decision … marks the end of a dark chapter in the Endangered Species Act’s implementation when politics were allowed to blot out science,” he said. “The owl has continued to decline since its protection under the Endangered Species Act. Part of the reason for that is the loss of habitat on private and state lands.”
Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist for the GEOS Institute and a former member of the spotted owl recovery team, objected to plans to log and thin forests inside the critical habitat area, saying no studies have been done on how that may harm owls, which favor old growth. He added that one study shows it reduces the amount of prey available.
The federal government has been trying to balance logging and fish and wildlife habitat since the late 1980s.
The designation of the spotted owl as a threatened species in 1990 triggered a 90 percent cutback in logging on national forests in the northwest, and similar reductions spread around the nation.

Meanwhile here in Colorado, we have finally figured out which fish is which (see paper here and this piece by Bob Berwyn) and there is a settlement agreement with CBD that stops motorcycles only from the trails in the area.

As in this article, inquiring minds might wonder if all those activities are on the same trails (which I don’t know) is there a scientific reason that motorcycles were singled out? Part of this question could be that there is another layer of complexity not revealed in these news stories.

And despite the fact that this occurred in a settlement agreement behind closed doors, couldn’t either the feds or CBD (same organization as noted above) show how they used “the best available science” to come up with this agreement?

And if they can’t or won’t, doesn’t it make you curious about how policy is really made, the involvement of the public and how public the process is? Sure the scope and impact of this tiny drainage is nowhere near the spotted owl, but one could argue that at least the level of documentation (with citations) in a decision notice for a CE or so and some sort of public process should take place.

I’m hoping the explanation of best science is in a legal document somewhere (the formal settlement agreement?) but just not easy for folks to access. It seems to me that if we are going to acknowledge that court is where important federal lands policies get made, then the public should have the same right of access to those documents (for example, posted on the forest website) as they would to CEs, EAs and EISs.

Those who know more about the spotted owl story, please comment.

AWR: The Rest of the Story on the Little Belts Lawsuit

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The Little Belt Mountain Range on the Lewis and Clark National Forest in central Montana as seen from overhead on this Google image. As anyone can clearly see, nearly the entire mountain range has been heavily roaded, clearcut and mined. Ask yourself: is this tremendous fragmentation good for native wildlife or native fish?

The following opinion editorial is written by Mike Garrity, Alliance for Wild Rockies. It appeared in today’s Great Falls Tribune:

The Tribune’s article on Nov. 18 about the Lewis and Clark National Forest left out some important details and readers deserve to know why the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council went to court to protect the Little Belt Mountains from the proposed “Hazardous Trees Reduction Project.”

First, it is important to bring some perspective to the scope of the project. Logging will take place on a whopping 575 miles of roads. If you were to jump on I-15 and head south, you’d have to go all the way to Salt Lake City to cover that many miles. But remember, all those miles of road to be logged are not spread out through three states from Great Falls to Salt Lake — they’re located in just one Montana mountain range.

The project would change those small roads and two-tracks to look like landing strips since all the roadside trees would be cut down for hundreds of feet. As a result, any elk that cross roads won’t be quickly sneaking across two-tracks, they’ll be fully exposed in an open area as long as a football field. That the project includes this kind of logging in wilderness study areas, research natural areas, inventoried roadless areas, and old growth also deserves explanation by the Forest Service, not obfuscation.

Widespread herbicide spraying is also proposed in several watersheds and streams that are already rated impaired due to sedimentation. More logging will dump even more sediment into these degraded streams, which is antithetical to state efforts to preserve Westslope cutthroat trout and keep Montana’s state fish off the Endangered Species list. The bottom line, however, is that the Forest Service is required by law to produce an environmental analysis for public review and comment.

While Forest Supervisor Bill Avey claims the agency wants more early public involvement, his attempt to use a categorical exclusion does just the opposite – it excludes the public and is the primary reason for taking the agency to court. The Forest Service has prepared an environmental analysis for all similar projects in Montana. Had this proposal been allowed to go forward, it would have set a terrible precedent not just for Montana, but nationwide.

Categorical exclusions were intended for purposes such as mowing lawns at ranger stations or painting outhouses, not logging over 17,000 acres along 575 miles of roads. Had Avey followed the law, the public would certainly have raised questions about the proposal. For instance, environmental analysis would reveal that massive infestations of noxious weeds such as thistle, knapweed, and hounds tongue already exist along these roads. The Forest Service admits it can’t control them now, but didn’t want to admit that logging will only make the situation worse.

Or how about the fact that Canada lynx, wolverine, black-backed woodpecker, Northern goshawk, Western toad, and Northern three-toed woodpecker are all known to occur in the Little Belts and that their numbers will be further reduced by these massive clear cuts? Or maybe Avey didn’t want the public to know that the Forest Service’s own studies show that logging wild lands has little effect on wildfires and that they even might make fires burn hotter because logged forests are hotter, windier, and drier than unlogged forests. Or perhaps Avey didn’t want to explain why the Forest Service wants to log these so-called hazardous trees at a cost of over $2 million to taxpayers when there isn’t a hazard.

Firewood cutters have already done a good job removing beetle-killed trees next to the roads — and they did it without a subsidy from taxpayers. And finally, the public might want to ask why Avey waited until he was sued in federal court to agree to follow the law and write an environmental analysis on this timber sale.

We explained to Avey at an appeal resolution meeting that the Forest Service was illegally excluding the public from having input on this proposal, but unfortunately, he ignored us until we sued, and then he pulled the project. We firmly believe that in America the public should have a say in the management of our public lands. It is unfortunate that we had to go to court to get it.

At odds over old forests: Treatment projects tied up in court and appeals: Great Falls Tribune

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I did the best I could with Google Earth…if anyone has a photo of this project please send…

Thanks to Terry Seyden for this one on one of our favorite topics. Nice example of the FS telling its side of the story. It is well worth reading in its entirety because it touches pretty directly on much of the discussion we have on this blog. I’ll just focus my excerpts on the two groups of interest and lawsuit counts.

Note: in Sharon’s opinion, if folks are going to choose litigation as a way of making policy, then all the information should be just as transparent and readily available as for an agency rulemaking or EIS.

So in the People’s Database: for each Region, a table of current lawsuits, including the plaintiffs, the current status, the project, claims and links to all court documents (at no cost). E.g., the 18 filed in FY 12, in R-1 according to this article.

Here is the link, and below are some excerpts.

The two groups in particular are challenging the forest plans in court or in administrative appeals where they often cite violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and National Forest Management Act.

The inability of the two sides to see eye-to-eye often leads to delays in the work getting implemented, sometimes for years. One project in the Lewis and Clark forest that’s still on the books first was proposed in 1999.

Avey said the delays in the implementation of the vegetation treatments, while part of the process, carry costs — opportunity costs in that it requires forest specialists to respond to lawsuits rather than working on future projects; economic costs to communities that would benefit from timber sales; and public safety costs.

“If there’s an area of interface or community at risk and it’s hung up in court, part of the cost is they’re at elevated risk,” he said.

Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said he doesn’t challenge any project unless he thinks environmental laws are not being followed.

“We’re trying to save habitat for native species,” he said.

Phil Sammon, a Forest Service spokesman for the agency’s Missoula-based Region 1, says the region sees a lot of lawsuits, maybe the most in the nation.

There are 30 active lawsuits in the region — 18 filed in fiscal year 2012 — involving agency decisions, including two cases in the Great Falls-based Lewis and Clark National Forest that don’t include appeals occurring at the administrative level. A third lawsuit in the local forest is being considered.

In September, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Lewis and Clark forest a victory, upholding a previous ruling by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy that a fuels-reduction project south of Stanford called Ettien Ridge would have no significant impact on wildlife.

The decision cleared the way for the Forest Service to implement the project — after six years, Avey said.

The Ettien Ridge project involves setting prescribed fires and using logging to thin stands on 1,600 acres to reduce the speed and intensity of a wildfire that could move through Sapphire Village, Avey said. The agency can’t stop fire, he said, but it can take steps to “take some of the punch out of that fire when it walks through there.”

Native Ecosystems Council brought the Ettien Ridge lawsuit.

Johnson, the group’s director, called the 9th circuit’s ruling on the Ettien Ridge project “a heart breaker.”

“These are beautiful old-growth trees,” she said.

Johnson says she’s on a “crusade” to keep goshawk from being listed as a threatened or endangered species. Currently, the state lists it as a species of concern. Removing old-growth trees, she says, reduces the number of red squirrels, a key food for the raptor.

In the Ettien Ridge decision, a three-judge panel in Seattle ruled the Forest Service completed the required “hard look” at the environmental impact of the burning and logging on elk hiding cover and goshawk populations as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

and

The mission of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies is to save habitat for native species in the Northern Rockies.

Currently it’s involved with 10 lawsuits in Montana, Utah, eastern Washington and Montana, said Garrity, the executive director.

Garrity says lawsuits are filed when the Forest Service is not fulfilling its obligation to ensure viable populations of native species. Those species include lynx, wolves, wolverine, goshawk and elk.

“We’re not suing on everything,” Garrity said. “If we think they’re following the law, we don’t contest the timber sale.”

His main concern with the projects is the logging, not the prescribed fire. Garrity says studies have shown that logging can increase fire danger and he calls it corporate welfare because he says receipts from timber sales don’t cover the government’s costs in preparing them.

It’s interesting that Johnson says that she is on a crusade for goshawks, while Garrity says the FS is not “fulfilling its obligation” or “following the law.” But these folks are investing beaucoup of their own and taxpayers bucks to send a 1600 acre project (I found 641 acres of mechanical treatment in the decision notice here) to appeals court. I am pretty much with Derek on the idea that policy wonks such as ourselves and taxpayers should be able to find out how much this costs the US government.

I would disagree with Forest Supervisor Avey when he says

“You read letters to the editor from time to time, and you hear from people, ‘How come it takes so long for you guys to get a project out the door?’” said Avey, the Lewis and Clark forest supervisor. “I do hope people understand the laws and the climate we’re in. It is what it is. It’s neither bad nor good.”

I think 6 years for a 640 acre thinning project is, really, clearly on the “bad” and not the “good” side. Suppose the USG tab was $400K per year for 6 years, say 2.4 million. If good goshawk habitat is $5K per acre, we could buy 480 more acres of habitat, not near a WUI. If you put that with what the plaintiffs spent, you gotta wonder if this way of doing business is really good for birds or taxpayers.