Judge Bans Timber Sales in Northwest National Forests

For the second consecutive year, a federal judge has ruled that the Bush Administration is not living up to its legal obligations to protect the threatened spotted owl and ordered a sweeping ban on timber sales in the national forests of coastal Northern California, Oregon and Washington.

Last year when Judge William Dwyer issued such an injunction, timber companies enjoyed a healthy backlog of previously approved timber allotments, so logging went on pretty much as usual.

Thursday’s ruling by Dwyer was broader and more toughly worded--and it came at a time when there is very little backlog of public timber that can be cut on 17 national forests encompassing 6 million acres of the region. The impact may be felt almost immediately.

Dwyer laid blame for the situation on the U.S. Forest Service. In May, 1991, the judge ordered the agency to prepare an environmental impact statement and show how it intended to meet its twin congressional mandates--to provide public lumber and at the same time preserve animal and plant communities.

The Forest Service responded with its plan in March. The judge on Thursday said the response was inadequate and ignored more recent evidence that owls were disappearing in the old-growth forests at a vastly faster rate than previously believed.

The owl is held forth as an “indicator” species, one whose survival is a barometer of the health of an ecosystem. In this case, the ecosystem is the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, the required habitat for the small, rodent-eating owls.

The judge went further and said that the Forest Service had an obligation to plan how to protect 32 other animals dependent on old-growth forest habitat, even though the creatures are not listed as endangered or threatened.

In his ruling, Dwyer stated, “These public lands belong to the entire nation. . . . Congress viewed them from the perspective not of a day but of generations. Many observers have noted the Forest Service’s habit of maximizing timber production at the cost of other statutory values. . . . But such a practice, no matter how long it may have gone on, cannot change what the statute requires.”

Attorney Todd True of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which brought the suit on behalf of 11 environmental groups, said the ruling was “a significant victory for the vanishing ancient forests and the many species that are struggling to survive there.”

Representing the timber industry, the American Forest Resource Alliance attacked the judge personally, calling Dwyer “the Rose Bird of the Pacific Northwest,” a reference to the unpopular former chief justice of the California Supreme Court who was ousted from office by voters.

“He has taken it upon himself to be all three branches of government at once by not only ‘interpreting’ statutes, but also making the laws and serving as the real chief of the Forest Service,” said the alliance’s executive director, Mark Rey.