Forest Owners React to Fire Suit: The fallout from
the punitive US Forest Service lawsuit that extracted over $122 million
in a fire damage settlement from Sierra Pacific Industries has Oregon
landowners scrambling to prevent similar attacks by Obama administration
federal prosecutors. Potential fire liability impacts and defensive
strategies are being explored by state and private forest attorneys.
Forest landowners near national forests have stepped-up fire prevention
and closed their private lands to public recreation use until fire
liability changes can be enacted in Oregon law.
Forest Road Legal Brief: Associated Oregon Loggers
joined several forest industry groups who submitted to the US Supreme
Court a legal brief, which supports the high court overturning a harmful
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling. The wrongheaded Ninth Circuit
decision—if implemented—would require every forest landowner across the
West to seek a federal Clean Water Act permit from the Environmental
Protection Agency just to use a forest road. Concurrent with the high
court effort, industry is lobbying Congress to pass legislation that
would exempt roads from federal permitting.
Suit to Overturn Planning Rule: In August, the
American Forest Resources Council (AOL a member) and several national
forest user groups, filed a lawsuit in the Washington DC District Court
to overturn the flawed National Forest Planning Rule that was adopted in
April 2012. For three years during Rule development, forest users had
argued that the proposed Forest Service Rule was both unbalanced and
illegal. The new Rule wrongly dictates future forest plans must discard
multiple-use, instead illegally making environmental & species
preservation the preeminent Forest Service goal...more
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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