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.
What triggered my rant was several things that converged in my mind from this thread: check it out. We have so much superfluous litigation with attorneys shopping judges along with liberal judicial activism based on "settled law" that is largely "bad precedent" that it stirred a lifelong resentment in me about the whole incestuous system.
I would agree with you and the things I read on your FR home page about the essential value and rights of the individual and that makes me ever angrier at the judicial branch as it was supposed to be the protector of individuals from the mobocracy, aka, democracy.
Did I detect a little hint of concern on your part over the right to bear arms? You're not one of those proponents of the right to arm bears, are you?
I've always thought that politics is the process where we make decisions on public policy without killing each other and when that fails, we go to war... even civil war. What blows me away is when Demonicrats get A JUDGE to help them violate the laws that govern moves like the Toricelli maneuver.
Legal remedies are rarely moral remedies anymore. Our system has degenerated into the Al Davis mentality of "Just win baby," by whatever means, no matter how deceptive or even outright fraudulent in some cases. I understand your perspective on flaky politicians but they're not the only cowards.
I wish your reply were not so stimulating to me as this my favorite ranting subject and you've got to stop pushing my buttons. My problem is that I care about our democratic process within our Republic and I don't like the way it's being abused and corrupted to make suckers of individuals that believe in the traditional American culture with borders and limits and taboos, etc.
Now I'd be interested in your responses as I see you are a truth seeker. Anyone that has poured over even the Urantia Book and the Bible to find truth is alright with me!!! (How much of Ayan Rand have you read and how much of objectivism do you buy? I ask as you seem to object to emotion! I just considered it passion.(grin))
Heh heh.... :o)
Cut it out! That's a huge pantload!!!
State Bar Associations are not governments! Furthermore, they are incapable of governing their members, they are nothing more than a danged trade association to make lowyers look good! It's a lobbying/political shake-down/CYA club for lowyers, organization. Look how hard it was to get clinton disbarred!!!
Their little "club" goes all the way back to the days when "esquire" meant more than a gentlemen's magazine title. Seriously, whether the FF's did, or didn't, they didn't envision the rampant stupidity of billion dollar fees from lowyers winning suits against America's founding crop... Tobacco, now did they?
I'll bet if challenged, the members of FR could list a thousand extremes promoted by lowyers that could never have been envisioned by our wise Founding Fathers!!!
Come to think of it... I'll bet you couldn't even tally all of them and the waste in human energy and production these flamin lowyers have cost since the beginning of the Earth!!! Worse still, they will get progressively worse as long as the Earth exists!!! They're on a ROLL!!!
Tar and feathers would be my choice but it seems to be (alas) out of fashion.
--Boris
IMHO that is the key.
Excuse me for buttin in, but wow, do I ever like that statement! I would have used the term "cleric," instead of "priest," to include 'em all! That is, if I were smart enough to have come up with such a profound statement to begin with. You really said it all!!!
Is the Robed One going to pay that Forester out of her paycheck for lost income from the timber not felled?
'Pod
This is a new group, isn't it? Is this the companion to the "Native Plant Society?" Is this something you have joined? Tell me please... hasn't logging along OR rivers gone on for pretty much 150 years now without killing the coho salmon off?
How come all of a sudden private property rights are a thing of concern to commercial fishing interests? Did they really need to ally with the militant litigators of the Sierra Flub? (That's "Earthjustice" former name = "Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund)
Could it possibly be that commercial fishing is over-fishing the waters far more than a little turbidity being created by private property timber activities? Why does public interests alway trump private interests of individual property owners?
Wait a minute! - It seems that here the true "public' interest is the private interest. It is the timber harvester that is providing the public good in this case, and the court, having gotten into bed with the pagan enviro-nazi agenda, is clearly working against the greater good.
Well, the USSR couldn't whup us, so they've joined us and waited for the liberal lowyers to make us the USSA!
If you think I'm mis-spelling lowyers, talk to Phil V. about it.
No, but this and other Robed Ones will eventually be called to account in a different venue of justice and retribution if they continue to push the ticket. It's just a matter of time and the results of their continued exercise of their arrogance and ignorance - at our expense.
Remember the line from Unintended Consequences?
"Stripping motivated people of their dignity and rubbing their noses in it is a very bad idea."
It's just a matter of time - and those unintended consequences.
Just a thought.
I'll answer your question after you tell me who the true "public" is and who is their bona fide legitimate representative.
When I was a duly elected representative of my constituency and was being told in a public meeting by an Earthjustice lowyer that HE represented "The Public," I got a we bit suspicious, to say the least.
I was almost tempted to tell him "My public can whup yer public," but in the end, he litigated against my taxpaying, voting constituents and managed to find a cowardly liberal judge who thought my "Public's" arguments didn't hold water!!!
"The fish come first!" (John Geramandi, former assistant to Bruce Babbit, now elected Insurance Commissioner of CA) This statement from an underling in the clinton administration whose campaign slogan was... "Putting People First!"
Last I heard, it already has, 2 or 3 years ago and still hasn't been re-authorized. I could be wrong, like the one time when I thought I was wrong.(grin)
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