Judge Rules Against Obstuctionists

BigHornRam

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Matt's pals are dealt a crushing blow!

Judge allows timber sale to go forward
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian



A federal judge has rejected a challenge to one of the keystones in the White House's Healthy Forests Initiative, allowing a timber sale to continue on the Lolo National Forest without full environmental review.

"What he said is that the categorical exclusion is a tool that can be used," said Chris West, "and it can be done quickly - before the value of timber is lost."

West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, applauded the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula to allow logging to continue on the Lolo's Camp Salvage timber sale.



The sale was administered under new federal regulations that allow for "categorical exclusions," - exemptions from normal environmental reviews and public-comment requirements for sales that fall into a narrow category.

To qualify for categorical exclusion status, the sale must be of dead or dying timber, on 250 acres or fewer, with less than one-half mile of temporary road building. Barring any "extraordinary circumstances," the categorical exclusion means there is no need for a full environmental analysis or environmental impact statement.

That, said Lolo forest managers, was exactly the case on the Camp Salvage sale, which covers about 245 acres of forest attacked by beetles.

The categorical exclusion status was applied, and the timber was sold last May.

But Missoula's Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Ecology Center intervened, filing suit in Molloy's court and arguing that the U.S. Forest Service had wrongly tried to limit or exclude public comment by "arbitrary and capricious" application of the categorical exclusion rule.

They succeeded in obtaining an initial restraining order from Molloy, which stopped logging on the site until the judge could hear further arguments.

With that initial restraining order expired, plaintiffs again asked Molloy for an injunction to delay work while the lawsuit continued.

This time, Molloy wrote that the environmentalists had not adequately shown what "extraordinary circumstances," if any, trumped the categorical exclusion status. And, he wrote, "it does not appear Š that the Forest Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously."

"It's very straight and clean," West said Tuesday, praising Molloy's order. "The plaintiffs didn't allege there was a violation of the conditions under which a C.E. can be used, and he said they didn't have a very good chance of succeeding in court."

West said he was surprised by the ruling, though, "because the judge was so strident in his opinion in approving the first restraining order."

This latest was a "big ruling," West said, because it supported, in effect, one of the "cornerstones of the president's Healthy Forests Initiative," namely categorical exclusions.

In his ruling, Molloy noted that the plaintiffs could, if they wished, file a suit directly challenging the categorical exclusion rule. The suit before him, however, was not that broad and dealt only with the appropriateness of applying the categorical exclusion to one small sale.

"We were trying to question their ability to do these categorical exclusions so widely," said Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. But, he said, the lawsuit was never intended to challenge the new rules in general.

The problem with this particular sale, Garrity said, is that it is being conducted in lynx habitat, and threatens to damage sensitive populations of the reclusive forest feline.

Others, he said, are challenging the overall categorical exclusion rule, specifically in Indiana federal courts, but his suit was never intended to do so.

"Simply put," he said, "we believed this was an inappropriate use of the categorical exclusion authority."

Now that Molloy has disagreed, Garrity said, he does not expect his group will challenge the decision. And although the lawsuit continues despite Molloy's rejection of the plaintiffs' bid for a restraining order, Garrity agreed it now might be a moot point.

Even with a delay for spring breakup, he said, the logging could be done long before the case is ever resolved.

Garrity, who had not yet seen Molloy's decision, said Tuesday that "I'd have to talk to our attorney to be sure, but I don't imagine we'd appeal it to the 9th Circuit or anything."
 
I saw this, I hope for the forests sake, more judges step in and let the logging start again.
 
I hope for the sake of the land as a whole and for the integrity of the existing federal acts, regulations, and environmental law that the judges keep doing the right thing.

Judges need to apply the law...not their beliefs.

Which in this case, I think he did (apply the law/regulations).
 
I would like to see more of these diseased forests cleaned up and put into the market place.
It would be just as good for them to burn up to get cleaned up, but I am seeing some of the areas burned in the last number of years is burning pretty danged hot and sterilizing the soils. But that is another topic all together.
I like any thing that is done to improve the forests we all like to recreate in.
 
Elkchsr-"but I am seeing some of the areas burned in the last number of years is burning pretty danged hot and sterilizing the soils."

I didn't realize that areas burned by fires are "sterilized". Most that I have seen are revitalized with better more nutrient rich soil for growing. I'm not saying it's better or worse but sterile isn't the word I would use for burnt areas. How many farmers burn their fields at the end of the year? I don't believe they are sterilizing the fields...

As far as the article goes, 1) I'm not a preservationist, I would be a conservationist 2) If done properly and within the boundaries of the law, I have no problem with using state and federal lands and the natural resources.
 
mt miller- Do the soils become enriched with the potash creating more useful soil after the fires? If I'm not mistaken, fire (even very hot fire) is used as a tool for not only clearing land but enriching the soils. I am also under the assumption that Lodge pole pine need fire to reproduce, but I may be mistaken on this.
 
Matt, yes fires are in most cases beneficial, but what they are talking about is fires that burn hotter than what would occur naturally, due to a lack of fire in the area for decades, and an unnatural buildup of fuel.
 
...exactly...

I would add though, that over time, every thing eventually comes back.
I saw this first hand in and around Mt. St. Helens when it went off, some of the areas I traveled thru had been scorched very deep.

Maybe in some areas it is good though that every thing is sterilized because it gets rid of all the bad weeds along with the good, one can only hope though that it is the desirable plant species that come back first
.
 
Matt as the others have stated- The effects of a high intensity burn on soil can be pretty astonishing. The soils can and will in fact become sterilized and can remain so for years. We had quite a few units on the Rogue what never did get reestablished while I was there (except for tan oak).

In addition, they can burn hot enough to make the soil become hydrophobic and actually repel water and reduce moisture penetration. That’s why in stand prescription writing you would rarely call for brush manipulation (via burning) on marginal/thin soils.

You are right about the additional potash but it typically doesn’t outweigh the damage due to the loss of organic material/ humus on the top layer of the soil and the heat also kills earthworms, bacteria, fungi, etc. that benefit the soil and increase its porosity. The ash is usually highly alkaline and when leached into the soil it can deflocculate the soil granules, again decreasing the porosity and leading to further erosion.

There are actually quite a few pine and other specious that have serotinous cones and need the benefit of fire to reproduce, but again its the degree/intensity of the fire that will dictate that success.



All in all, low creeping fires do benefit the things you speak of but high intensity burns really can suck for years.
 
It is wrong to assume that every fire will be hot and "sterilize" the ground. Cheese mad a baseless assumption, one that is commonly used by the "sky is falling" crowd in order to bypass Laws, Studies, Animals, and Hunters in favor of looney tune saw operators and greed mill owners.
 
Cheese mad a baseless assumption

I mad what????

but I am seeing some of the areas burned in the last number of years is burning pretty danged hot and sterilizing the soils

sybil/guner how is this baseless, I put no absolute as a statement in this post and the statement is true in how it is written, elaborate to make yourself not look so foolish and full of hate...
 
Elkchsr
but I am seeing some of the areas burned in the last number of years is burning pretty danged hot and sterilizing the soils. But that is another topic all together.

Sybil
It is wrong to assume that every fire will be hot and "sterilize" the ground. Cheese mad a baseless assumption, one that is commonly used by the "sky is falling" crowd in order to bypass Laws, Studies, Animals, and Hunters in favor of looney tune saw operators and greed mill owners.

Whats a mad baseless assumption? do you have to be really pissed off to make one?

What ELKCHSR "assumed" is right on the money.
He didn't say all burns are to hot and are sterilizing the soil, he said some,
I would also rather see diseased timber cleaned up and put to a good use.
All I ask is that there be minimal raod building and good clean up when finished.
 
MarvB, Mtn miller- Thanks for the info. Very interesting. I must not have seen the intensity in fires around here. Most I have seen have grasses growing the next year and seedling pines coming up. The only real negative I have seen is the high density of lodge pole in areas fires have gone through.
 
Thanks Michael...

Matt...

Just not to far from you, there was a great big fire a couple years ago, it covered an area of 66 square miles.

In some of the areas the fire just skunked around, others it just turned every thing black and killed the trees, and in a few others, especially in some of the drainages I saw, it took out every thing and burned the dirt to about a foot deep... That is a hot fire and all of the science stated above is subject to these areas. It is also a very bad thing because of the slopes that are concerned inside of drainages with the amount of erosion that will take place and have taken place in these areas...

Looking at the area, a little controlled thinning in the area would have really made a big difference to what the outcome would have been...
 
LMAO..... Due to putting out fires, we now have places we can't have fire becasue the fire gets too hot, so we should log the areas and continue to not have fires, which results in more fuel being added, which results in hotter fires which we will have to put out so we don't have fires..... |oo

What a looney way of thinking...

You can do controlled burns, prescribed fires, etc. and restore the damage done by the Welfare Firefighters. Running around like the Cheese with his head cut off saying the "sky is falling" is not the answer to anything.
 
I think the age old "theory" of soil sterilization is pretty lame...and doesnt really have much truth to it. Yes, it happens, but not often and rarely on any scale that would have much of an impact on over-all ecosystem health.

For instance, anyone that knows anything about the fire cycles of lodgepole pine forests, knows that they have evolved under stand replacement wildfires for years...typical fire intervals of 200+ years are very common. Let me tell you, if there is any forest type that burns hotter and more intensely than a nice thick lodgepole forest...I havent found it. Its also fair to note within 15 years of a fire in lodgepole you can hardly claw your way through the regeneration. If soil sterilization were a problem, we wouldnt have a single live lodgepole pine in the woods.

Theres other variables too like soil type, depth, parent materials, litter depth, duff depth, aspect, fire intensity AND duration, etc. etc. etc. that all play into the actual "damage" caused by wildfire.

The soil sterilization problem is really a non-issue on 95+% of the land burned by wildfires...but it does make a good excuse to promote your agenda.

Let it burn still makes way more sense than stomping out fires as fast as you can.
 
You can do controlled burns, prescribed fires, etc. and restore the damage done by the Welfare Firefighters. Running around like the Cheese with his head cut off saying the "sky is falling" is not the answer to anything.

You are a very odd duck guner/sybil...
It's either all or nothing with nothing in-between with you and that is not the case at all.... you have no case here and there is no "sky is falling", this is some thing that you are grasping at straws with and I would really guess you don't know much about, but keep chattering, it shows...
But then again, you like the meaningless dead end fights and arguments... :)
 
You want to talk about welfare fire fighting? Last summer when I was scouting in Idaho there were several small wilderness fires burning. There were F. S. guys driving up and down the corridor road with all kinds of equiptment and a water truck. They came up to the lookout tower to wrap it in some protective cover since a fire had blown up and was rapidly approaching the tower. When they came by my camp, one of the guys stopped to chat. He said they just "monitor" fires in the wilderness, they don't fight them. I can understand that, but what's the point in having them and all their equiptment there in the first place? What's the point of having lookout towers in the wilderness? Seems like a big waste of taxpayer money to me.
 
BHR, many wilderness towers were constructed in the 1950's-60's. Very few are even used for fire detection and many never are. Most RD's dont have adequate funding for lookouts. Its cheaper to fly after lightning storms, etc. to detect fires.

What they do with them now is preserve them and rent them to the public for a reasonable price. I've been in many fire towers both in and out of the wilderness...very unique buildings and worthy of perservation. Good look-outs can pin-point fires to an amazing degree of accuracy. The Stark Mtn lookout up Nemote Creek on the Ninemile district has been manned by the same lookout for over 20 years...and has called in hundreds of fires.

Lookouts are part of history that deserve some preservation...and in remote locations still have a need, IMO.
 
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