That is what this is for
Posted on 01/03/2003 10:20:05 AM PST by farmfriend
Ruling: Private logging must comply with ESA
PORTLAND (AP) -- A Portland judge recently ruled that Oregon's state forester must hold private landowners to tighter logging regulations.
U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown ruled that the state must ensure that the private logging projects it approves adhere to the federal Endangered Species Act.
The ruling was in response to a February lawsuit five conservation groups brought against State Forester James Brown, who reviews all logging in Oregon to see that it complies with the state Forest Practices Act. The five groups said Brown routinely violated the U.S. Endangered Species Act by approving clear-cut logging in northwest Oregon that leads to landslides and erosion harmful to protected coho salmon.
The decision raises the environmental bar for private-lands logging, now the mainstay of logging in the Northwest and often more closely overseen by the state than the federal government.
Trying to head off a broader ruling on whether such logging is harming salmon, the state, joined by timber industry groups and forested Tillamook County, asked Brown to dismiss the case. They said the lawsuit was misplaced because it's not the state's job to enforce federal law.
But the judge rejected the state's arguments, saying the state forester is liable if he authorizes actions that harm endangered species.
The judge did not rule on whether state-permitted actions are in fact harming species, and state officials strongly deny that they are. But by refusing to dismiss the case, the judge clears the way so she can decide that question.
"The idea that they don't have to show they are complying with the Endangered Species Act has been a pretty prominent piece of their defense, and now the judge has taken that away," said attorney Patti Goldman of Earthjustice, which represents the conservation groups including the Pacific Rivers Council, Audubon Society of Portland and Native Fish Society.
If the judge does determine the state is allowing harm to protected species, the conservation groups want her to order the state forester not to allow logging on steep slopes, along streams and in other sensitive sites. Such a ban could affect thousands of acres of private timberlands in northwest Oregon and echo through other parts of the state with species issues, prompting what landowners may see as onerous new mandates.
"It could create a whole new atmosphere for forest stewardship in Oregon, and not necessarily a good one," said John Poppino, president of the Oregon Small Woodlands Association, which intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of the state.
Assistant State Forester Charlie Stone played down last week's ruling because it did not address the underlying issue of whether state-approved logging harms coho salmon.
"It was a ruling simply that she did not find the state arguments powerful enough to dismiss the case out of hand," he said.
No one element in our society has so screwed this nation at every level so inexorably as liberal trial lawyers and environmental lawyers. All they ever accomplish is making EVERYTHING cost more with negligible benefit to society as a whole.
The minute we get them controlled with meaningful tort reform, or better yet, loser pays, we will finally rid society of an inordinant obstruction to freedom and well being, for our Republic!
Talk about sheeple! Electing or appointing ANY of these intimidators to high positions of responsibility, including POTUS, (like that guy that just announced from the Carolinas) is evidence of "the public" being totally oblivious to the obvious by voting for them. They are taught eliteism in our liberal law schools. It is inculcated into their brash beings.
They are never taught the distinction between knowledge and wisdom. They are taught how to destroy power, but not how to weild it for the broad betterment of mankind. They are a destructive force for the evils of liberalism. Yet Americans treat them with respect and yes, even awe!
No lawyer should ever be allowed to produce laws. Their only function should be to argue and interpret through the Judicial Branch. They should be forced to represent anyone who asks for it, regardless of one's ability to pay, just like Doctors are forced to in Emergency Rooms and without tax dollars through a county/city public defender department.
It's incestuous to allow them to manufacture, interpret and enforce laws in a monopoly of their liberal ideas for the ruling of people. Besides, it just ain't working!!!
Your opinion is your opinion and, as such, is not open to critcism. It would be interesting to know why you feel this way though. Any factual or logical reasoning involved in all that emotion? Seems to me that the legal system (faults though it may have) is doing a pretty good job of keeping a rather heavily armed society from killing each other by providing legal remedy to perceived wrongs.
Under our constitution, no member of the Bar can hold public office because they have accepted the "Title of Nobility" Esquire from the Crown Temple in London.
The question is how can we enforce this provision of the constitution. - Can we sue to remove them? - The suit would be heard by another 'Esquire' with an obvious bias. Is there an answer?
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