December 8, 2004
Need a little good news this dreary season? EPIC's national forest program has been part of a few heartening victories in recent months, halting some needlessly destructive projects on our public lands.
In late October, we learned that the Mendocino National Forest decided to withdraw its decision to log the proposed Cold Chimney and Ocean timber sales above the Black Butte River, a key tributary to the Middle Fork Eel. EPIC appealed the projects, citing a laundry list of problems. Among the most important were the potential impacts to water quality, and thus to salmon and steelhead. Another major issue was the Forest Service's failure to assess the potential impacts of the project on Management Indicator Species (MIS).
Even more significant are two court victories which, in addition to saving some very special places from the chainsaw, helped to set good precedents for looking at issues like the MIS program, cumulative effects, and the rights of the public to be involved in land-management decisons.
In a single week, we learned that we won not just EPIC's challenge to the Divide-Auger timber sale, also on the Mendocino NF, but also the challenge which EPIC, the Klamath Forest Alliance, and the Klamath- Wildlands Center (KS Wild) brought to the Beaver Creek timber sale on the Klamath National Forest.
We particularly want to recognize and applaud the heroic work that KS Wild has been doing in the Klamath. We're honored to be working closely with such an effective and dauntless bunch.
The Divide-Auger timber sale would have sacrificed key high-altitude old-growth forest at the southeast corner of the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness. In Deciding that the sale violated key environmental laws, the San Francisco Federal court pointed particularly to unresolved problems with further fragmentation of spotted owl habitat in a place where connectivity is a key problem, as well as to inadequate work on Management Indicator Species.
The Beaver Creek timber sale win saves 975 acres of older forest along the Siskiyou Crest in a watershed already badly damaged by overcutting on private lands. And again, the judge pointed to the Forest Service's clear failure to do adequate work on MIS in haulting the sale. In the wake of our win, the Forest Service announced not only that they've given up on that project, but that they're re-evaluating two nearby projects that have similar problems. Now that's effective use of law and science to protect the environment!
EPIC was represented in the case by Erik Schlenker-Goodrich of the Western Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit public-interest environmental law firm with offices in Eugene, Oregon and Taos, New Mexico. EPIC was formed in 1977 and is dedicated to preserving, protecting, and restoring biodiversity, native species, watersheds, and ecosystems in northern California.
For more information please call
707/923-2931 or go to
www.wildcalifornia.org
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TOC for Forest & River News, Fall 2004