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Groups claim agency can’t base planning on ecological sustainability
Industrial users challenge national forest planning rule.
By Bob Berwyn
SUMMIT COUNTY — Timber, ranching and off-road motorists are suing the U.S. Forest Service over a recently adopted national planning rule. The groups claim that the Forest Service illegally adopted ecological sustainability as a primary purpose of forest management, and that rule includes an unlawful mandate to provide ecosystem services.
Careful readers will hear the faint echoes of the paranoid black-helicopter crowd in the background, for example when the lawsuit mentions a UN-sponsored report that discusses forest ecosystem services such as carbon storage, along with “educational, aesthetic, spiritual and cultural heritage values.”
That’s all apparently a bit to touchy-feely for the hoof and chainsaw crowd, who have asked the federal District Court for Washington, D.C. to overturn the rule. Read the lawsuit here. (more…)
Filed under: biodiversity, Colorado, Environment, public lands, US Forest Service, White River National Forest | Tagged: Blue Ribbon Coalition, Environment, logging industry, National Forest planning rule, public lands, sustainability, US Forest Service | 5 Comments »
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