Appeals court rejects Lolo logging plan

Appeals court rejects Lolo logging plan
Associated Press

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index...olologging.inc

MISSOULA — A plan to log areas burned in the Lolo National Forest
during the 2000 fire season has been rejected by an appeals court.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Forest Service did not
take "the necessary hard look" at the effects of logging on unroaded
areas. The decision reverses a lower court ruling by U.S. District
Judge Don Molloy of Missoula upholding much of the Forest Service's
logging plan.

The court, in a decision released Thursday by the Forest Service, said
logging in an unroaded area is an "irreversible and irretrievable"
action that could damage the environment. The court said the Forest
Service's study of the logging project's potential impact was
superficial.




The court did agree with the Forest Service on at least one portion of
its Environmental Impact Statement that found the project would
improve water quality.

Molloy, on the other hand, found no fault with the forest's analysis
of unroaded areas, but placed an injunction on the post-burn project
because he believed foresters knew too little about the possible
impacts on water quality.

The Court of Appeals dissolved Molloy's injunction, then declared the
post-burn project illegal because of the potential impact on unroaded
areas.

Environmentalists praised the court's ruling, while the Forest Service
said it couldn't comment until reviewing the decision further.

About one-third of the project area, or nearly 42,000 acres, is
unroaded.

Salvage logging had started in the burned areas when Molloy shut down
the post-burn project late last April