Court rejects woodpecker habitat appeal

Rejecting conservationists' bid to defend habitat for a rare woodpecker at Lake Tahoe, a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Forest Service is not required to protect animals not covered by the Endangered Species Act. The decision from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will allow logging in an area of burned forest, angering environmentalists who say it overturns decades of policy. The judges upheld a District Court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit against the Forest Service brought by the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity challenging the logging. The appellate court found the Forest Service had the authority to conclude the blackbacked woodpecker would not be threatened by a project intended to ease fire threats at the site of the 2007 Angora Fire, which burned 250 homes near South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Environmentalists said the ruling grants the federal agency a troubling amount of discretion in interpreting its own regulations and undermines wildlife protections in place under the National Forest Management Act since 1982...more