Timber sales halted again in new ruling
Copyright 2000 The Seattle Times Company
December 10, 200
Seattle Times Staff and wire services
A day after a federal judge issued an injunction against 178 timber sales under the Northwest Forest Plan, environmentalists say the plan isn't broken but that federal agencies need to follow their own rules.
"There is a road map out there to guide the agencies to protect salmon habitat, but that road map hasn't been followed," said Jan Hasselman, attorney for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, which brought the lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein said Friday the National Marine Fisheries Service did not follow proper guidelines when it cleared the way for the sales in Washington, Oregon and Northern California.
The ruling prevents the Fisheries Service office in Seattle from allowing the sales in areas that affect salmon protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Some of the sales have already been completed, however, and neither a spokesman for the Fisheries Service nor Hasselman knew how many sales would be halted.
Those timber sales are in Umpqua, Siuslaw, Mount Hood, Siskiyou and Rogue national forests in Oregon; Bureau of Land Management lands in the Coos Bay, Salem, Eugene, Roseburg and Medford, Ore., areas; Klamath, Shasta-Trinity and Six Rivers national forests in California; and Gifford-Pinchot National Forest in Washington
Fisheries Service spokesman Brian Gorman said he was not familiar with Friday's ruling and could not comment on it. Rothstein wrote that the Fisheries Service was still doing many of the same things that led her to halt 24 timber sales in Oregon in October 1999. The service has appealed that ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to Hasselman, Friday's ruling prevents federal agencies from moving forward with timber sales until the Ninth Circuit rules on the appeal in the Oregon case.
Rothstein wrote that the Fisheries Service had again failed to measure the effects of the timber sales it approved and did not insist loggers meet standards for logging along stream banks.
Environmentalists did not expect the sales to be stopped permanently. They said they simply wanted the Fisheries Service to abide by the Endangered Species Act.