A logging industry lawsuit that sought to force the Bureau of Land Management to increase logging on public lands in southwest Oregon was thrown out today by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling vacates a 2013 decision that would have forced the Bureau of Land Management to sell timber even when those sales would have harmed salmon and had detrimental impacts on water quality and recreation. 

“The appellate court today threw out an unprecedented, unworkable, and backward decision that could have forced the Bureau of Land Management to violate its duties to manage these lands for water, air, wildlife, and people, not just clearcuts,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney at Earthjustice. “This ruling should discourage logging companies from demanding to cut 100-year-old forests because no one person and no particular private logging company is entitled to log wherever it wants.”

“Our public lands provide clean drinking water, protect wild salmon, and preserve water quality in our rivers, lakes, and streams. These lands are home to some of the last remaining ancient forests in America,” said Joseph Vaile of the Oregon-based Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. “We should focus on a responsible plan for these forests and leave a legacy for future generations.”

“Dinosaurs in logging industry have claimed for years that they should have priority over protecting old-growth, clean water, wildlife, and recreation on America’s public lands. For 20 years science, the law, and the public have been telling them no,” said Doug Heiken, Oregon Wild Conservation and Restoration Coordinator.

The logging companies had argued that a 1937 law required the Bureau of Land Management to sell large amounts of timber from the Medford and Roseburg districts in southwest Oregon, regardless of harm to water quality, recreational use, and wildlife and fish. In 2013, a district court judge in Washington, D.C. sided with the logging industry, despite contrary legal decisions from other federal courts in the Oregon and the west. Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands appealed as interveners in the timber lawsuit. The D.C. Circuit maintained that the logging companies and logging lobbying groups had failed to show that they were actually harmed by any Bureau of Land Management actions and dismissed the case entirely. 

“A number of prominent politicians cited this logging industry lawsuit when they proposed legislation to weaken environmental protections and increase clearcutting on our public forests,” said Doug Heiken, Oregon Wild Conservation and Restoration Coordinator. “The perceived timber industry threat is now gone, and it’s time to put those outdated ideas behind us—time to focus on a balanced plan that recognizes all the public benefits that flow from our public forests: clean water, carbon storage, fish and wildlife, recreation, and quality of life.”

Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands, represented by Earthjustice and Western Environmental Law Center, were appellant-intervenors in this case.

Read the court decision.