Court blocks cuts in Northwest forests
A federal appeals court shot down a series of timber cuts planned for national forests in the Pacific Northwest yesterday, ruling that regulations ostensibly protecting the spotted owl and other threatened species are "blatantly contradictory to Congress' express demand."
In a ruling covering 6.9 million acres but with potentially even greater implications, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it's not enough for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to merely keep threatened species from dying out.
The government also must protect natural areas deemed critical to the recovery of battered animal populations so that they no longer need protection under the Endangered Species Act, said the court, which is based in San Francisco and covers nine states.
"The ESA was enacted not merely to forestall the extinction of species ... but to allow a species to recover," the court said in a ruling written by Judge Ronald Gould.
The ruling echoes one by a New Orleans-based appeals court in 2001 -- one never followed by the Bush administration -- and a ruling earlier this week by a federal district court judge in San Francisco. The New Orleans ruling dealt with the gulf sturgeon. The California case was about the desert tortoise.
At issue in all three lawsuits was what the Endangered Species Act calls "critical habitat" for species designated as in need of federal protection. The government and environmentalists have long wrangled over the issue.
The Bush administration and presidential administrations dating back to Ronald Reagan's followed rules that said critical habitat must be managed merely to keep protected species from disappearing. But that allows a lot of leeway -- for instance, permitting timber harvests in old forests suitable as a home for spotted owls.
"The agency's interpretation would drastically narrow the scope of protection commanded by Congress," the 9th Circuit court ruled.
Continue reading this story from the Seattle P-I:
Court blocks cuts in Northwest forests