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USDA Forest Service Tongass National Forest News Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 28 October 2011 Ted Schenck • Wildlife, Subsistence and Planning Staff Officer
(907) 228-6303 • tschenck@xxxxxxxxx Federal appeals court affirms decision in favor of Forest Service in Logjam lawsuit
Forest Service timber project analysis complies with environmental laws
THORNE BAY, Alaska—The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the Logjam Timber Sale Project complies with federal environmental laws. In doing so, the court of appeals affirmed an earlier decision of a federal district
court upholding the Tongass National Forest’s environmental analyses of the project.
The Ninth Circuit held that the Logjam Project, which includes several timber sales, complied with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which requires federal agencies to assess the impacts of activities on federal lands.
The court found that the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) that the Forest Service prepared took a “hard look” at the environmental impacts of the project, which provides for timber harvest on 3,422 acres of forestland and the
construction of 22 miles of roads on Prince of Wales Island. Viking Lumber Company of Craig, which with the State of Alaska intervened in the case on behalf of the Forest Service, had already purchased the Diesel timber sale when the lawsuit began and subsequently purchased the Slake timber sale.
Both sales are part of the Logjam Project. Several groups that brought the lawsuit (the Tongass Conservation Society, Greenpeace Inc., and Cascadia Wildlands) sought to stop the timber sales throughout the course of the suit but the court allowed the sales
to continue during the suit. Given the commitment on the part of the Tongass National Forest to enhance and diversify local economies in Southeast Alaska in support of the Transition Framework, Forest Service officials are pleased with the outcome of the court case,
which will allow Logjam timber sales to continue unimpeded. -30- To receive official Forest Service information by e-mail, please subscribe by visiting http://www.fs.fed.us/news/subscription/ To unsubscribe from this mailing list, please visit http://www.fs.fed.us/news/subscription If you wish to make changes to an existing account, please visit http://www.fs.fed.us/news/changes.shtml |
