Judge orders BLM to sell more timber in S. Oregon

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to sell more timber in Southern Oregon, and vacated a system federal scientists use to avoid harming the northern spotted owl.

The ruling out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came in a case filed by the timber industry against the Department of Interior.

Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that BLM has failed to consistently offer as much timber as called for in its 1995 resource management plans for the Medford and Roseburg districts since 2004.

And he found that a computer model used by government agencies to estimate spotted owl numbers in timber sale areas was adopted without input from the public, as required by the Administrative Procedures Act. He prohibited government agencies from using the protocol until it goes through a public comment process. The ruling did not address whether timber sales that have been sold based on the invalidated owl estimation protocol, but not yet cut, were still valid.

That portion of the ruling leaves the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service without a scientifically valid method of estimating whether spotted owls, a threatened species, can survive the harm from losing a portion of their forest habitat to logging, said Andy Stahl, director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a conservation group. An earlier method was struck down in an earlier court ruling.

"It means, I suspect, that they will actually have to go look for them, which is something they have not wanted to do," he said.

BLM and Fish and Wildlife had no immediate comment on the ruling.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

The rest of the release can be found here - http://www.katu.com/news/local/Judge-orders-BLM-to-sell-more-timber-in-S-Oregon-213265211.html






An interesting commentary, titled Be Careful What You Wish For
 on this decision is provided by Andy Stahl in the New Century of Forestry blog - link
http://ncfp.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-2/