ed: Thursday, March 8, 2007:
GRANTS PASS - A federal judge has stopped the Mount Hood National Forest, the most popular in Oregon, from offering an old growth timber sale until it shows it has followed its own rules to consider whether the logging would harm sensitive wildlife.
"Our hope is that old growth logging on the Mount Hood National Forest is over for good and the Forest Service will now prioritize the repairing of damage done from 50 years of industrial logging,'' said Alex Brown of Bark, a Portland conservation group. "This ruling sends a really clear signal to the Forest Service. The continued logging of old growth is unacceptable, period. The public has demonstrated they don't want it. The science doesn't even justify it.''
Located in the Cascade Range outside Portland, Mount Hood is popular with skiers, mountain climbers and hikers, and gets more than 4 million recreational visitors a year, more than any other national forest in Oregon.
It was once one of the most heavily logged of the national forests in Oregon, but former timber towns that now rely on tourism and recreation for their economies have thrown their support behind legislation pending in Congress to create nearly 130,000 acres of new wilderness areas where logging would be off-limits.
In a ruling dated Saturday, U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman in Portland found the U.S. Forest Service was arbitrary and capricious when it failed to monitor the impact logging would have on pine marten, pileated woodpeckers, deer and elk, as required under the National Forest Management Act.
Those species were designated by the Forest Service as indicators of the health of old growth forest ecosystems.
The Forest Service had argued that under formal forest management plans and 2005 Bush administration revisions to forest management rules, it was not required to monitor wildlife. But the judge found that rules imposed in 2000, which called for using the best available science, applied to the project.
Originally proposed in 1998, the Slinky timber sale called for effectively clearcutting 184 acres of scattered patches of old growth in the headwaters of the Clackamas River, which has been heavily logged.
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