Suit Demands Ban on Logging in U.S. National Forests

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

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12/22/98

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Following is an article from the New York Times regarding a lawsuit filed by

environmentalists demanding a cessation of logging in U.S. National Forests on

the basis that the economic costs of logging exceed the value of the timber.

Despite the fact that calls for stopping all logging may prove difficult,

pushing for more holistic forest planning processes certainly makes sense--

particularly since there is the basis for such cost-benefit analysis in law--but

its implementation has been lacking. This case may provide an interesting

precedent.

g.b.

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Title: Suit Demands Ban on Logging

Source: New York Times

Date: December 17, 1998

Byline: JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

WASHINGTON -- A coalition of environmentalists plans to sue the Forest Service

on Thursday, demanding an end to logging in national forests on grounds that the

federal timber program causes more economic harm than good.

The environmental groups, led by Friends of the Earth and Forest Guardians,

assert that the Forest Service routinely ignores laws and regulations that

require it to calculate the economic costs of logging, such as damage to water

resources or tourism, and to weigh them against the benefits, such as the value

of the timber that is sold.

In one sense, the lawsuit upends the typical dispute between business groups who

say that environmental regulations cost more than they are worth, and

environmentalists who usually argue that the benefits of strict environmental

rules cannot be expressed in dollars. For years, the environmentalists have been

fighting attempts in Congress to require cost-benefit tests. Now they are in

court seeking exactly that.

The lawsuit has been joined by recreation, hunting and fishing organizations,

owners of small forest lots, tourism enterprises and others who say they have

been harmed economically by the logging program.

It is supported by some prominent natural resource economists who contend that

is possible to measure the worth of forests that are not logged -- and indeed

that these values probably far exceed the worth of the timber they hold and the

jobs that are created by logging.

The suit is to be filed in federal district court for Vermont, in Burlington,

said Brian Dunkiel, a staff lawyer for Friends of the Earth. It follows a year-

long campaign in which the environmentalists filed administrative appeals with

the Forest Service challenging hundreds of individual timber sales by the

service, including in the Green Mountains National Forest in Vermont, on similar

grounds, only to be rebuffed repeatedly.

"The law requires the Forest Service to account for net economic and social

values," Dunkiel said. "It is almost as though the Congress had hired the Forest

Service to serve as the public's accountant, to manage these assets.

What has become clear is that the Forest Service has failed terribly."

James Lyons, the undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources, said he

had not seen the complaint and could not address its specifics.

"As an organization we are certainly moving in a direction that takes into

account all the resources," Lyons said. "We are seeking to improve, if not

maximize, net public benefits. Our analysis is not focused solely on timber

production.

"It's not what we take out of the woods, it's what we leave behind that really

matters."

The coalition's lawsuit relies on a new but increasingly influential theory

among ecologists that it is possible to put a monetary price on the public

benefits that flow from healthy ecosystems, such as providing habitat for

commercial species, protecting drinking water reserves, providing recreation and

helping control global warming.

It comes at a time when the federal timber program, in which the Forest Service

auctions off its trees to commercial companies, is under challenge on many

fronts. The Clinton administration is considering sweeping new forest policies

aimed at protecting the last pristine stands of trees in roadless areas, and

anti-logging forces have proposed legislation in Congress that would restrict

logging and road construction in tens of millions of acres in national forests.

But some conservationists have complained that the administration's approach

exempts major forests from protection, and the legislation has virtually no

chance of being enacted because pro-logging lawmakers control committees in the

House and Senate that have jurisdiction over forests.

Instead, the plaintiffs in the suit are seeking to force the Forest Service to

stop logging until it obeys what they say are the requirements of existing laws

and rules.

In documents prepared for the lawsuit, John Talberth, the executive director of

Forest Guardians, presents the results of a broad review he conducted of the

professional literature describing what he called generally accepted standards

for measuring the values of forests and the costs of logging them.

He also presents results of a survey of hundreds of timber sale documents

obtained from the Forest Service, which he said demonstrated that the agency

"has failed to incorporate significant information about the socio-economic

values of unlogged national forests into timber sale program decisions."

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