The case, stemming from a 1999 lawsuit in Roseburg, Ore., initially involved only a few dozen timber sales. She later ordered logging halted on 170 parcels throughout the region on the same grounds. The appeals panel found that the fisheries service couldn't back up its contention that new growth on clear-cut land would compensate for any habitat loss associated with logging. The Northwest Forest Plan, in response to the ESA listing of the northern spotted owl, is aimed at balancing the demand for timber from public lands with the need to protect habitat for dwindling populations of fish and wildlife. It reduced timber harvests by roughly 80 percent from levels of the 1980s.
Environmentalists contend the ruling validates the Northwest Forest Plan.
But industry groups contend the ruling is evidence the forest plan has clamped federal-land timber harvests in a death grip, while promising to provide sustainable harvests. Clearly the Northwest Forest Plan is very broken now, and it's time to take a new look. At the Bureau of Land Management, where recent lawsuits have sent timber sales plummeting from 258 million board feet in fiscal year 1998 to less than 70 million this year and last, officials were scurrying to gauge whether the decision would allow them to rework the sales or simply shelve them for good. At the other end, it may mean that we'll have to write up biological assessments timber sale by timber sale. Forest Service officials said they fully intend to work with the other agencies to find a way to make the sales more palatable.