Lawsuit Targets Forest Service Logging Practices
12/18/98
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Title: Lawsuit Targets Forest Service Logging Practices
Source: Portland Press Herald
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 18, 1998
A group of environmentalists, business owners and others say the U.S.
Forest Service's logging program may not make economic sense.
They sued the U.S. Forest Service on Thursday, claiming the agency
has violated federal law by failing to consider the economic and
social benefits of a standing forest before cutting the trees.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington, asks the
court to stop logging in national forests until the Forest Service
can prove the benefits of its logging program outweigh the costs.
The lawsuit comes at a time when the Forest Service has reduced its
timber program. Last year, 3.5 billion board feet were harvested from
national forest lands, compared to 12 billion board feet harvested in
the late 1980s, agency spokesman Alan Polk said.
Although he refused to comment on the lawsuit, Polk did attribute the
decline in timber sales to the process used to evaluate the effect of
logging and a shift in philosophy from harvesting strictly for timber
production to harvesting for other reasons, primarily for the health
of the forest.
The plaintiffs do not aim to stop logging, said Brian Dunkiel, a
Burlington lawyer representing the plaintiffs. "The goal of the
lawsuit is to compel the proper accounting." However, plaintiffs
believe that proper accounting would lead to "significantly less"
logging, Dunkiel said.
Uncut forests generate income and jobs just as logging does, Dunkiel
said, and the Forest Service is required to consider other uses.
The suit was filed in Vermont because several plaintiffs and lawyer
Dunkiel are from Vermont, Dunkiel said.
The lawsuit is unlike other environmental lawsuits, which have pitted
the environment against jobs, Dunkiel said. "This case is really
about jobs versus jobs. There's a certain amount of jobs and economic
activity that's created by logging public lands and there's a certain
amount of jobs and economic activity that's created by unlogged
public lands, and we want to find out how the scales balance out."
The suit was initiated by Forest Guardians, an environmental group
based in Sante Fe, N.M.
Plaintiffs include:
* owner of a medicinal herb company in Indiana whose income depends
on a healthy, standing forest.
* an Arizona hunter, who claims to lose hunting opportunities when
forests are logged causing guides, outfitters, equipment suppliers
and others to lose income from hunters.
The plaintiffs have tracked timber sales during the last year and
appealed about 300 sales in which they believed the Forest Service
did not properly account for the net economic and social values of
forest lands, Dunkiel said.
The Forest Service dismissed all but two or three appeals, Dunkiel
said.
There are 191 million acres of national forest lands in 43 states.
Less than half is available for logging.
Michael Kellet, executive director of RESTORE: The North Woods in
Concord, Mass., said his group is not involved in the lawsuit but
does support it.
RESTORE successfully sued the Forest Service in federal court last
January over a snowmaking pipeline at Loon Mountain in Lincoln, N.H.