Nev. professor sues to block Sierra Nevada logging

A renowned conservation biologist who has done research for the Forest Service for more than a decade is suing the agency to try to block logging in the mountains above Lake Tahoe. He says it's being done illegally under the guise of reducing wildfire threats that don't exist. Dennis Murphy, a Pew Scholar research professor in biology at the University of Nevada, Reno, says the Forest Service is ignoring its own analysis of the low fire risk in the high-altitude, old-growth forest on about 100 acres surrounding Echo Lakes, about 8 miles southwest of South Lake Tahoe, Calif. The logging threatens the survival of the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed be listed as an endangered species, said Murphy, past president of the Society of Conservation Biology. The project is within the area the agency proposed in April for designation as habitat critical to the frog, he said. "In its zeal to implement the project, the Forest Service has disregarded these facts and is violating the mandatory procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act by blazing ahead," according to his lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento on Nov. 6...more

Does the word "zeal" apply to the Forest Service on anything?  Anyway, another logging/thinning project is delayed or denied.