Posted on 11/27/2002 4:43:43 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
DENVER - Logging in Beaver Park in South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest can continue now that environmentalists have lost their legal battle to block it. U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham said Tuesday he would not halt the work because a new logging law did not violate a 2000 settlement between the government and environmentalists which limited logging in the forest. Sen. Tom Daschle attached the legislation to an emergency spending bill this summer to exempt parts of his home state from environmental regulations and allow more tree cutting as a way to prevent wildfires. Nottingham said Congress legally changed those environmental regulations by carving out an exemption for South Dakota. He also said the 2000 settlement, negotiated by both sides and then approved by the federal court, allows the government to make changes to its forest management plan. Stephen Novak, a lawyer for the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, had argued that Daschle's legislation shouldn't be allowed to trump the settlement in which environmentalists agreed not to challenge some logging projects in exchange for concessions from the U.S. Forest Service. The project began last month and some trees have been cut down in Beaver Park south of Sturgis but was temporarily halted Nov. 14 after the first hearing on the lawsuit. Nottingham wanted to give more time to environmentalists to respond to a last minute brief submitted by the government. The South Dakota plan is the only forest thinning project approved following the summer's destructive wildfire season. A fire that forced the evacuation of the gambling town of Deadwood scorched 11,589 acres in July. A 13,700-acre fire that erupted in August destroyed three homes and forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes near Mount Rushmore in the southern Black Hills.
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