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Issues
The vast majority of forested land in the U.S. is privately owned, but that land has been logged relentlessly. So lately the timber industry has turned its attention to the national forests. But the forests are much more than lumber. They provide habitat for wildlife, protection for watersheds, and recreational opportunities for everyone: hunters, fishermen, backpackers, and hikers alike.
Preservation of the Tongass National Forest on the panhandle of Southeast Alaska has been a major preoccupation of Earthjustice since the earliest days. Tom Turner describes how it all began.
Learn more about the Tongass
Federal efforts to weaken regulations governing logging on steep, landslide-prone hillsides successfully rebuffed
Legislation seeks to protect America's largest intact temperate rainforest, sustainable economies dependent on it, and even save taxpayers money.
A judge refused to let timber harvesting occur on Kuiu Island, a Native subsistence area of the Tongass National Forest because the U.S. Forest Service used misleading market information when issuing a permit.
To justify an increase in logging on steep slopes in the Northwest, the Forest Service ignored advice from leading scientists including some from the Fish and Wildlife Service.
An attempt by the Bush administration to remove wildlife protection and exclude the public from forest-management decisions is rejected.
An attempt by irrigators to overturn minimum flows for salmon is rejected.
Permits for timber sales in the Rogue River Basin were based on "arbitrary and capricious" statements, and not scientific fact.
New management plan must be developed
Legislation seeks to protect America's largest intact temperate rainforest, sustainable economies dependent on it, and even save taxpayers money.
Ninth Circuit denies challenge to Forest Service decision that protects endangered chinook salmon and steelhead trout.
Earthjustice teamed with Alaskan Native groups and a political party to succesfully challenge a new Alaska state law that inhibited public access to courts.
Forest Service forced to reconsider its goshawk protection policies.
San Francisco Ruling Could Apply Everywhere
Judge Slams FAA for Failure to Conduct Thorough Study; A Second Case Proceeds in State Court
Timber company had tried to intimidate environmental groups
A federal court of appeals in San Francisco on December 12 overturned an injunction that had blocked a presidential order to stop building roads in national forest roadless areas.
Federal government is failing to protect salmon from harmful effects of logging under the Northwest Forest Plan.
Court rules Forest Service cannot continue to approve timber sales in roadless areas while simultaneously considering the very same areas for wilderness protection.
Logging in the Pacific northwest had just about wiped out the northern spotted owl by 1980. What followed was ten years of political mayhem.Starting after World War II, and accelerating rapidly with the administration of Ronald Reagan, the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest were being felled at a rate that would seem to make them disappear altogether within decades. Litigation to save the northern spotted owl from extinction slowed the rate of logging dramatically in the nick of time.
Preservation of the Tongass National Forest on the panhandle of Southeast Alaska has been a major preoccupation of Earthjustice since the earliest days. Tom Turner describes how it all began.
