Pocatello, ID -- Recreation advocates in August joined with several
other organizations in a legal challenge to new forest planning regulations
promulgated by the U.S. Forest Service.
The BlueRibbon Coalition (BRC) and the California
Association of 4Wheel Drive Clubs (Cal 4 Wheel) joined forces with the other
forest product and multiple use groups in filing a lawsuit to require the
Forest Service to modify its new planning rule to avoid its devastating impacts
on the health of National Forests, recreational uses of the forests and
communities located nearby.
The U.S. Forest Service formally adopted new
National Forest Planning rules on April 9, 2012. The new regulations shift the
agency away from a jobs and ecosystem approach. Instead, the planning rule
would cement the National Forests into endless litigation over single species
management; an approach that even the agency admits has failed repeatedly in
the last three decades.
The complaint takes the Forest Service to task for
elevating species viability, ecological sustainability, and ecosystem services
as mandatory national forest management objectives, above the five statutorily
prescribed multiple uses: outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and
wildlife and fish purposes. It also admonishes the Forest Service for requiring
recreational opportunities to fit the agency's definition of
"sustainable" in order to be allowed on national forest lands.
Greg Mumm, BRC's Executive Director said;
"The new planning rules are actually more complex, costly, and
procedurally burdensome than the regulations they replace. The agency has
utterly failed to meet the guidelines of President Obama's directive calling
for regulations to be cost effective, less burdensome, and more
flexible. As written, this rule will tie the hands of forest managers and
allow preservationists groups to bury any active management in endless
litigation."
Mark Cave, president of Cal 4 Wheel expressed concern that the
new regulations shift the Forest Service away from multiple use/sustained yield
and impose a binding requirement for "ecological sustainability,"
which the agency doesn't define clearly. "The new rules are a recipe
for analysis paralysis. It doesn't take any clairvoyance to predict never
ending challenge from the environmental community." Cave said. .
"The wood products industry tried very hard
to convince the Forest Service that these new rules work against forest health
and jobs, both of which are vital to rural economies. We commented at
every stage in the process," Howard Hedstrom, president of Hedstrom Lumber
in Grand Marais, MN, and president of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition,
said. "These rules ignore the multiple use mandate given to the agency by Congress. Instead,
they focus on single species preservation. Going to court against the Forest
Service was the last thing on our minds when we launched this coalition last
year, but with the impact on jobs that will be caused by the planning rules, we
had no other choice."
Parties in the lawsuit include: The Federal Forest
Resource Coalition, Alaska Forestry Association, American Forest Resource
Coalition, American Sheep Industry Association, California Association of 4
Wheel Drive Clubs, California Forestry Association, Minnesota Forest
Industries, Minnesota Timber Producers Council, National Cattlemen's Beef
Association, Public Lands Council, and Resource Development Council for Alaska.
The Complaint can be found at http://www.sharetrails.org/uploads/Dkt_1_Complaint.pdf
