Court Endorses ‘Biological Corridor’ Need in Logging

In a decision hailed as a landmark by environmental groups, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the government must consider the impact a logging project will have on a “biological corridor” protecting plant and animal life.

Lawyers for opponents of a proposed timber salvage and harvest plan in Northern California said the ruling was the first in the nation to overturn a project because of the potential effects on the biological diversity of an area. They said the decision could provide a formidable new environmental weapon, offering legal grounds for preserving forests that go beyond the need to save individual endangered species.

“The courts have repeatedly ruled in our favor in cases involving ancient forests and the spotted owl,” said Nathaniel S. W. Lawrence of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But endangered species are just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve been losing the battle to protect biological diversity and thus have been impoverishing the landscape.”

In the ruling, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a fire-recovery timber sale in which green, dead and diseased trees would be removed from a 3,325-acre area near Grider Creek in the Klamath National Forest. The government, the court said, had improperly failed to take a “hard look” at the potential damage of the plan on migrating species.

Lawrence predicted that after forest officials further study the issue, they will decide to preserve the Grider Creek area.

An attorney for three timber companies involved in the timber sale expressed disappointment with the ruling and said the ironic result of a further delay in the project will be to halt the replanting of trees that would protect plants and animals.

“Forty years from now this area may be brush fields rather than stands of timber,” said Wesley R. Higbie, a San Francisco lawyer.

Higbie also defended the project’s protective features, saying that the U.S. Forest Service had made an extensive study of the potential impacts on biological diversity and concluded there would be no significant adverse impact on plants or creatures.

The Forest Service developed a timber salvage and harvesting plan after fire had swept through more than half of the 28,000-acre Grider Creek drainage area.

The Marble Mountain Audubon Society and other groups went to court saying the plan failed to meet the standards of the federal environmental policy and clean water acts by neglecting to consider the unique value of the biological corridor between two wilderness areas in the region.

Such corridors, the environmentalists said, are entitled to greater protection because they provided routes for animals--such as wolves, bears and mountain lions--to travel and plants to propagate. A federal district court refused to grant an injunction blocking the project, but on Thursday, the appeals panel, in a 3-0 ruling, reversed that decision and ordered further study of the issue by the Forest Service.

Chief Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, joined by Judges Mary M. Schroeder and Harry Pregerson, said the Forest Service had concluded without adequate study that preserving only a half-mile-wide strip in the area would provide a sufficient “corridor.”

“An agency must set forth a reasoned explanation for its decision and cannot simply assert that its decision will have an insignificant effect on the environment,” Goodwin wrote. “The Forest Service did not take a ‘hard look’ at the impact (of the plan) on the Grider drainage biological corridor.”