Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with timber interests in a dispute over the regulation of runoff from logging roads in western forests. In a 7-1 vote, the court reversed a federal appeals court ruling that held that muddy water running off roads used in industrial logging is the same as any other industrial pollution, requiring a Clean Water Act permit from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Legislation that would move the ownership and management of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands in New Mexico to the state has been introduced at the Roundhouse. The Transfer of Public Lands Act is sponsored by Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-Alamogordo, and Sen. Richard C. Martinez, D-Espanola... Herrell said New Mexico has a rich history of farming, ranching, hunting, fishing and oil drilling. "In our past we have also had a thriving timber industry that is unfortunately near nonexistent ... ... A healthy timber industry, managed responsibly by New Mexicans, would not only help our economy by creating...

The Obama administration announced with little fanfare Thanksgiving eve plans to lock up nine million acres of land for the endangered Northern Spotted Owl. The plan would double the amount of public forest lands proposed by the Bush administration for the owl’s habitat in Oregon, Washington and Northern California, and is expected to severely limit commercial activities like logging. Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he is concerned the plan will cost taxpayers millions of dollars. “Expanding the Northern Spotted Owl’s critical habitat will further endanger the timber industry, the thousands of jobs that...

The U.S. Forest Service has re-examined the effects of a logging project on lynx habitat in an attempt to lift a judge's block of the Lolo National Forest project. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ruled in June that the Forest Service did not properly analyze the cumulative effects of the 2,038-acre Colt-Summit project on lynx habitat.

Zubrin told the Free Beacon that logging would solve the problem. “Logging as part of a program of rational forest management” could decrease the risk of fire by “thinning out mature trees that are the pine beetles’ major targets,” and creating “gaps between forests, to act as firebreaks and beetle-breaks,” he said. If “you turn that wood into furniture, it doesn’t turn into CO2,” Zubrin said. Green activists “don’t care if a billion tons of wood turns into CO2,” so long as people are not responsible. However, Joshua Ruschhaupt, director of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Sierra Club, told...

As crews continue to face off against a fast-moving wildfire in northern Colorado, some in the timber industry say the area's fire danger has been heightened by U.S. Forest Service policies and an economy that discourages them from harvesting millions of acres of dead trees that stand ready to burn. The High Park Fire burned has about 80 square miles west of Fort Collins, Colo. It is 15 to 20 percent contained but has been active on its west flank, where there are many beetle-killed trees... As bad as the fire has been, timber experts say the forests of northern...

A conservation group says rare woodpecker chicks in burned forest stands at Lake Tahoe won't survive if the U.S. Forest Service proceeds with a contentious post-fire logging project. Leaders of the John Muir Project in the Sierra are pressing the agency to postpone cutting around the trees until after the nesting season in August. They are hoping for a ruling by then on their appeal to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court aimed at blocking what's left of the salvage operation. The logging is in an area where a fire burned more than 250 homes in 2007. Group director Chad Hanson...

Smokey Bear has done such a good job stamping out forest fires the past half-century that a woodpecker that's survived for millions of years by eating beetle larvae in burned trees is in danger of going extinct in parts of the West, according to conservationists seeking U.S. protection for the bird. Four conservation groups filed a petition with the U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday to list the black-backed woodpecker under the Endangered Species Act in the Sierra Nevada, Oregon's Eastern Cascades and the Black Hills of eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota. It is the first federal petition to recognize...

The U.S. Senate has approved of a $109 billion bill that provides two years of funding for transportation and transit projects around the country. The bill may or may not be taken up by the U.S. House Representatives depending on if they choose to write a separate House bill, but hopefully what will be left out of any final version is an amendment by Montana U.S. Sen. Max Baucus. His amendment funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to the tune of $1.4 billion for fiscal years 2013 and 2014 — quite a jump from the $323 million it...

MONTROSE — Semi-retired logger John Hutt has always known his line of work is dangerous. Working alone in a remote wilderness in San Miguel County the morning of Aug. 19, he was forced to cut off all of the toes on his right foot after nearly six tons of machinery slipped and pinned his foot. Hutt used a 3-inch pocketknife to sever his toes from the machinery. The 61-year-old later drove to a parking lot near the Ridgway Dam, where an ambulance arrived to take him to Montrose Memorial Hospital. Hutt didn’t face the prospect of waiting several lonely days...

Grants Pass, Ore. (AP) -- A federal appeals court has reaffirmed that muddy water running off logging roads after rainstorms is pollution that requires a special permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Will clear-cutting forests increase global warming? That's a contentious issue as California, which is seeking to slash its carbon footprint, wrestles over rules to manage the state's private forests. The Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based environmental group, this week filed lawsuits against the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in seven California counties to halt logging plans for 5,000 acres across the Sierra Nevada and Cascade regions. The group contends that the agency approved the projects without properly analyzing carbon emissions and climate consequences under the California Environmental Quality Act. "Clear-cutting is an abysmal practice that should have...

Earth First! made headlines with its tree-spiking in the 1980s, but the guy who helped make the anti-logging tactic famous didn't invent it. Mike Roselle even titled one chapter of his new book "Why I Quit Spiking Trees." In it, the co-founder of Earth First!, the Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society described how the practice brought old-growth timber cutting to national awareness, but became a public relations disaster for the protesters. "I think the Wobblies can take credit for it if they want, but it's been around as long as logging," Roselle said, referring to the Industrial Workers...

In a move to protect endangered species, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Thursday that his department had reversed a Bush administration decision to double the amount of logging allowed in and around old-growth forests in western Oregon. Veering between swipes at “indefensible” moves by the Bush administration and pledges to step up noncontroversial timber sales, Mr. Salazar said in a conference call with reporters that he was reinstating a compromise reached 15 years ago to limit logging with the goal of protecting watersheds, trout and salmon fisheries and endangered birds like the northern spotted owl. “Today we are taking action...

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack gave his personal approval for a 381-acre clear-cut in America's largest stand of temperate rain forest. Not cool, President Obama. Not cool at all. The Obama administration has approved the sale of timber from the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The 17-million acre forest is the largest stand of continuous temperate rain forest in the U.S. and contains a lot of old-growth trees. It's basically a snapshot of what the world looked like before we rolled heavy onto the scene. The U.S. Forest Service gave the green light for the sale after approval from Secretary...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday struck down the Bush administration's change to a rule designed to protect the northern spotted owl from logging in national forests. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled from Oakland, Calif., that the U.S. Forest Service failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of changing the rule to make it easier to cut down forest habitat of species such as the spotted owl and salmon on 193 million acres of national forests.

The U.S. Forest Service will announce a "timeout" on new road-building and other development in designated roadless areas of national forests today, sources say, prolonging a seesaw battle over a policy first announced in the waning days of the Clinton administration. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which former President Clinton issued shortly before leaving office in 2001, protects nearly 60 million acres of national forest land from logging and other development, largely in Western states. It has faced a protracted court battle that pitted conservation groups against the timber industry and several of those states. The Bush administration let the...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The Department of the Interior has told a federal court that it will not defend the Bush administration's decision to cut back protections for the northern spotted owl. The action could affect logging in western Oregon.

GRANTS PASS, Ore.—The Obama administration has notified a federal court that it will not defend the Bush administration's decision to cut back protections for the northern spotted owl. In a motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., lawyers for the Department of Interior said they based the decision on an inspector general's report finding political interference in owl protections by a former deputy assistant Interior secretary, Julie MacDonald. If the spotted owl measures developed by the Bush administration are withdrawn, it would become difficult for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to go forward with plans to...

HOULTON, Maine — James Hogan was a logger at Louisiana Pacific Corp. for 21 years when he was first laid off in 2004. He spent four years scrounging odd jobs and selling personal property to keep solvent before getting hired as a woodloader at Treeline Inc. of Lincoln in July 2008. The 46-year-old town man had almost recovered from that financial disaster, clearing $600 for a 55-hour workweek, when Treeline laid him off on Jan. 28. Since then, Hogan has searched for logging work from Fort Fairfield to Bangor without success.