Another Forest Service Bogus 'Emergency,' Groups Say

For the second time this week, the U.S. Forest Service is accused of declaring a bogus "emergency situation" to push through salvage timber sales, this time clear-cutting in Northern California's Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center says such declaration is justified only when a project threatens imminent economic loss to the government, not to a private, third-party timber auction bidder, as in this case. Before 2003, the rule did not include even this economic provision; it was intended for true emergencies such as forest fires. A 2008 lightning storm burned about 3,600 acres in the Upper South Fork Trinity River Watershed in Shasta-Trinity National Forest. After declaring an emergency to exclude the project from administrative appeal and environmental review, the Forest Service now seeks to log about 200 acres there. A biological assessment that claims the threatened northern spotted owl does not use the burned areas is inaccurate, as the owl uses post-fire areas for forage and roosting, the Wildlands Center says...CourthouseNews