From the Associated Press via the Duluth News Tribune
Two planned sales of timber from the Chequamegon-Nicolet National
Forest in northern Wisconsin have been blocked by a federal judge
who said the U.S. Forest Service didn't properly assess the impact
on certain hawks and martens that inhabit the forest.
The rulings Thursday and Friday by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman
of Milwaukee require that the forest service consider the cumulative
impacts that six national forest timber sales approved by the agency
in 2003, instead of assessing the sales individually.
The plans blocked by his rulings called for selling harvest rights
on about 8,800 acres of forest land near Lakewood, in Oconto County,
and 7,740 acres in Forest County, about 20 miles east of Eagle River.
Still pending before Adelman is a challenge to the sale of another
5,600 acres that straddle Sawyer and Ashland counties near Clam Lake.
The Habitat Education Center, a Madison-based environmental group,
sued the forest service last year to block three of six timber sales
in the northern forests.
"An agency can't splice and dice individual actions and not look at
the forest through the trees," said Howard Learner, a Chicago
attorney for the center.
Holly Kulinski, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service, said the
agency's attorneys were reviewing the decisions and had not decided
how to respond.
The agency could appeal, comply by doing additional study of the
environmental impact or revise the plans to resolve the center's
objections.
The Habitat Education Center contends the timber sales it challenged
would damage the habitat of the red-shouldered hawk, the goshawk and
the American marten, all of which reside in areas of the
Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.
"These species and the public deserve a federal agency that is going
to follow the law when analyzing the effects of their actions on the
habitat and the recreational uses of the land," said David Zaber, a
resource ecologist and one of the plaintiffs.
Zaber said the logging that was approved by the forest service would
fragment the big tracts of old-growth forest needed by the hawks to
thrive.
Gene Francisco, a former state forestry chief and executive director
of the Wisconsin Professional Loggers Association, said the rulings
will hurt the logging industry.
For example, he said the timber sale on the 8,800 acres in Oconto
County was expected to generate some 60 million board feet and about
$2 million in revenue, while also giving area lumber mills
much-needed raw material.
"We're fully expecting we could get a mill closing in the state, a
company moving operations where they can get raw product," Francisco
said.
