U.S. Court Rejects Timber Industry Claim on Bird Habitat
6/19/96
In a victory of sorts, a U.S. appeals court has blocked some timber sales
in the Pacific Northwest based on threats to the marbled murrelet, a
seabird. About 4,000 acres of ancient Douglas firs and Western hemlocks in
coastal Oregon and Washington will be saved from industrial forestry.
However, "Salvage logging" (logging of largely old growth, natural stands
to remove dead and dying trees; really logging without having to follow
environmental laws) continues across much of the United States.
g.b
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Court rejects timber industry claim on bird habitat
Copyright 1996 Reuters Limited.
June 15, 1996
WASHINGTON (Reuter) -- In a major defeat for the timber industry, a U.S.
appeals court Friday backed the Clinton administration's move to block
timber sales where the marbled murrelet, a threatened seabird, lives in the
Pacific Northwest.
The industry had filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service, saying that
Congress had cleared the way for cutting trees where the bird lived when it
mandated timber sales in old- growth forests in Oregon and Washington last
year as part of a logging provision attached to a disaster relief bill.
In the so-called salvage logging rider, Congress mandated the cutting of
dead and dying trees and the resumption of old-growth timber sales that had
been suspended in 1990 to protect wildlife habitat. But Congress said trees
should not be chopped where threatened or endangered birds were "known to
be nesting."
Timber companies had challenged the scientific [Marbled murrelet] standard
that the government had used to prove marbled murrelets were nesting in the
area.
Reversing a lower court's decision, a three-judge panel on the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the evidence the Forest Service used
was good enough.
"This court has chosen science over the pseudo-science of the timber
industry," Assistant Attorney General Lois Schiffer said.
The ruling is expected to save about 4,000 acres of ancient Douglas firs
and Western hemlocks in coastal Oregon and Washington, according to the
Justice Department.
"If these trees had been logged, the bird would have gone extinct in Oregon
and Washington," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for the Sierra Club Legal
Defense Fund, which backed the Forest Service in the case.
The appeals court also overturned a lower court ruling that the government
was required to allow certain timber sales that had been rejected by their
original purchaser or stopped by courts.
The government is now free to block those timber sales, which could have
affected areas where endangered salmon swim, the Justice Department said.
Boyles said she hoped the court rulings would spur Congress to repeal the
salvage logging measure, which environmentalists considered their biggest
loss last year.