FS settles with enviro group in Idaho timber suit

The U.S. Forest Service settled a lawsuit filed by environmentalists fighting a central Idaho timber sale by agreeing to scale back logging that was meant to reduce fuels near the town of Salmon. In May, the Missoula, Mont.-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies won an order from U.S. District Court Judge Edward Lodge to halt the Salmon-Challis National Forest's 1,486-acre Moose Creek timber sale, which had been approved in 2006. According to a pact signed this week by both sides that resolves the litigation, work will now be limited to timber cutting in several areas that a local logger had purchased before the lawsuit was filed in 2007. The Salmon-Challis National Forest also agreed to stop logging old growth stands greater than 80 acres and apply heightened scrutiny to future commercial logging - at least until it updates the Land and Resource Management Plan it uses to manage its 4.3 million acre territory. The agency also must pay the environmental group's $23,000 legal bill....