Court confirms:US Forest Service flubbed science by allowing logging in Tongass

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned four decisions by the US Forest Service to allow logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the nation’s largest national forest. At issue in the August decision, was the assessment of deer habitat, the primary prey of the rare Alexander Archipelago wolf, or “Islands Wolf.” The lawsuit was brought by the environmental groups Greenpeace and Cascadia Wildlands, to protect the wolf subspecies’ viability as well as subsistence deer hunting by local residents. The case, Greenpeace v. Cole (Forrest Cole is the Tongass Forest Supervisor), concerned a computer model the Forest Service used which, as the court heard, greatly underestimated the impact of logging on the deer's winter habitat as well as overestimating the habitat that presently exists. In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel ruled that the Forest Service had ignored the best available science and failed to follow its own Forest Plan...more