#logging industry

[rjzimmerman]

Federal law doesn’t mandate minimum amounts of logging in Alaska’s Tongass rainforest, judge says | Alaska Beacon

Judge Sharon Gleason on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Alaska Forest Association, Alcan Timber and Viking Lumber.

Excerpt from this story from the Alaska Beacon:

A federal judge in Alaska has rejected a lawsuit that sought to reinstate a management plan that would allow heavier logging in the world’s largest temperate old-growth rainforest.

The result leaves an Obama-era management plan in place, but it could be short-lived: The administration of President Donald Trump is already at work on a new plan that could allow more logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. 

In an order published Friday, Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the lawsuit filed by Viking Lumber, Alcan Timber and the Alaska Forest Association. 

The three groups sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture — the parent organization of the U.S. Forest Service — last year, alleging in part that the federal Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990 required the Forest Service to offer enough timber sales to meet market demand.

Gleason ruled otherwise, finding that TTRA does not impose “a mandatory duty” on the Forest Service to ensure that market demand is met by Tongass timber sales.

“Whether the harvest levels are designed to actually meet market demand is a discretionary agency action, not a mandatory requirement imposed by the TTRA on the Forest Service,” she wrote.

Gleason also declined to take up plaintiffs’ argument about whether the Forest Service violated the Administrative Procedures Act, and she ruled that a 2021 announcement about Tongass strategy did not amount to formal rulemaking under law. She did not analyze whether it would have met legal standards if it had been a formal rulemaking process.

Plaintiffs were represented by Pacific Legal Foundation, which on Friday said that the Forest Service’s approach has been devastating to plaintiffs.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

The Fix Our Forests Act Is a Logging Bill Disguised as a Firefighting Bill | Common Dreams

If passed, it would open millions of acres of forests to logging without scientific review or citizen input. A better name for this legislat

Introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), and having passed in the House, it’s now being rushed through the Senate in an attempt to capitalize on the heightened fire concern surrounding the tragic LA fires. A vote is expected any day now.

The bill claims to “protect communities by expediting environmental analyses, reducing frivolous lawsuits, and increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration projects.” But if protecting communities were really the goal, this bill would pour resources into the only methods proven to do that: hardening homes and defending immediate space.

Most homes don’t catch fire directly from flames themselves, but from embers blown ahead of a fire. Simple measures like screening vents, covering gutters, and pruning vegetation directly around buildings dramatically improve their fire resilience. Thinning vegetation in the immediate surroundings, within 100 feet or so of the dwelling, can also help. These were among the recommendations of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. But rather than heed those recommendations by investing in boots on the ground to harden homes and educate communities, the bill diverts resources to backcountry logging.

The U.S. Forest Service has spent years making the argument that “mechanical treatment” of forests reduces wildfire. Independent research, however, comes to different conclusions, that thinning harms the forest and actually increases the very conditions that favor fire—heat, dryness, and wind. The reasons are fairly obvious. For instance, removing trees makes it harder for forests to slow wind, increasing the wind speeds of potential fires and thus the speed of spread. It also allows more sunlight to reach the forest floor, heating up the ground. Even more importantly, trees don’t just stand around soaking up sunlight, they also cool and hydrate their surroundings. It’s called transpiration, and can be understood as a kind of sweating, just like we do to keep cool in the sun. A single tree can have the cooling power of up to 10 air conditioners.

But that really is just the beginning. Those trees also help make rain. By sweating water vapor they not only cool the air, they deliver water vapor to the sky, feeding the formation of clouds. Even more remarkable, they seed that vapor with biochemicals such as terpenes (the forest scent) and other bits of biota that provide the grains for eventual rain drops to condense around. Forests make clouds. Those clouds then rain down, watering other forests, hydrating soil and vegetation, and increasing resilience to wildfire.

In other words, what the Fix our Forests Act calls dangerous fuels are also air conditioners and humidifiers, rain makers and rain catchers, as their needles gather and slow the falling of rain, allowing it to seep into the ground and make its way to aquifers, which will prove critical during the dry season. Of course, older, deeply rooted trees are best able to tap this water, but there are no protections for them in the Fix Our Forests Act.

[plethoraworldatlas]

Peruvian rainforest defender killed returning from environmental workshop

Quinto Inuma Alvarado was shot three times in the back and once in the head, his son said.

A Kichwa tribal leader has been shot to death in an area of the Peruvian rainforest that's seen high tensions between Indigenous people and illegal loggers.

Quinto Inuma Alvarado was attacked as he was returning from presenting at a workshop for women environmental leaders in the San Martín region of the Amazon on Wednesday, his son, Kevin Arnol Inuma Mandruma, told The Associated Press in a phone interview. Peruvian police confirmed his death.

...

Quinto Inuma had received numerous death threats over illegal logging, said Kevin Inuma.

The loggers "told him they were going to kill him because he had made a report," he said. "They've tried to kill him several times, with beatings and now gunfire."

...

Last year, an Associated Press investigation revealed Kichwa tribes lost a huge chunk of what was almost certainly their ancestral territory to make way for Peru's Cordillera Azul National Park, which straddles the point where the Amazon meets the foothills of the Andes mountains. The trees in it were then monetized by selling carbon credits to multinational companies seeking to offset their emissions.

The Kichwa say they gave no consent for that and received no royalties, even as many lived in food poverty after being barred from traditional hunting and foraging grounds. Quinto Inuma attended a meeting in 2022 with Peruvian national parks authority Sernanp, which was observed by The AP, to discuss the conflict.

[devinlund]

Williams Lake, BC

[plethoraworldatlas]

Sightings of Uncontacted Tribe Spur Calls to End Logging in Peruvian Amazon | Common Dreams

"This is a humanitarian disaster in the making—it's absolutely vital that the loggers are thrown out, and the Mashco-Piro's territory is pro

A leading rights group on Tuesday called for loggers to be "thrown out" of a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon following recent sightings of people belonging to what is believed to be the world's largest uncontacted Indigenous tribe.

London-based Survival International published video and photos of dozens of Mashco-Piro people taken near the village of Monte Salvado in southeastern Peru near the Brazilian border. The group said that in recent days, more than 50 Mashco-Piro have appeared near the village, which is inhabited by the related Yine people. A group of 17 Mashco-Piro were also recently sighted near the neighboring village of Puerto Nuevo.

Several logging companies are operating within just a few miles of where the Mascho-Piro were spotted. One company operating inside Mashco-Piro territory, Canalaes Tahuamanu, has laid more than 120 miles of road there to facilitate timber extraction. The company is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as a sustainable and ethical operator, even though it is known to be felling trees inside Mashco-Piro territory. Survival International is calling on the FSC to withdraw its certification.

"This is a humanitarian disaster in the making—it's absolutely vital that the loggers are thrown out, and the Mashco-Piro's territory is properly protected at last," Survival International director Caroline Pearce said in a statement Tuesday. "The FSC must cancel its certification of Canales Tahuamanu immediately—failure to do so will make a mockery of the entire certification system."

[rjzimmerman]

Center for Biological Diversity: Massive Logging Plan Conflicts With Biden’s Goal to Save Carbon-Storing Trees

Old multi-story forest slated for phased clearcut, Kootenai National Forest. Photo credit: Yaak Valley Forest Council

Excerpt from a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

Conservation groups sued the U.S. Forest Service today to challenge its approval of a massive logging project that would clearcut thousands of acres and log mature and old-growth forest in the Kootenai National Forest in northwestern Montana.

Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Missoula, says the logging and road construction would threaten an imperiled population of grizzly bears on the Montana-Canada border and release significant amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

“Allowing huge, old trees and crucial grizzly habitat to be destroyed is reckless and incredibly short-sighted,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This massive logging project defies President Biden’s executive order aimed at protecting old trees. We need these magnificent carbon-storing forests to help fight climate change and we’ll do everything possible to save them.”

The Black Ram project will allow nearly 4,000 acres of the Kootenai National Forest to be commercially logged, including clearcutting more than 1,700 acres and logging hundreds of acres of centuries-old trees. These rare, old forests are champions of carbon storage, which reduces harms from climate change.

“For decades the Kootenai National Forest has been clearcutting our oldest, largest trees,” said Rick Bass, chair of the Yaak Valley Forest Council. “The proposed Black Ram sale is climate treason. The Department of Agriculture and Forest Service are deliberately undercutting the Biden administration’s commitment to battling climate change.”

The Forest Service approved the project June 21. The plan undermines Biden’s April executive order aimed at protecting mature and old-growth trees, as well as the administration’s claim that it wants to protect 30% of our lands and waters by 2030.

[rjzimmerman]

Ventura County, Ojai, groups sue U.S. Forest Service over plan to remove trees, brush

Here's what we know about three lawsuits filed this week over the U.S. Forest Service to cut trees and clear brush in Los Padres.

Excerpt from this story from VC Star (Ventura County):

A coalition of conservation groups, outdoor retailer Patagonia, the city of Ojai and the county of Ventura sued the U.S. Forest Service this week over the agency's plan to cut trees and clear brush from a remote stretch of Los Padres National Forest.

The complaints say the Forest Service violated federal environmental law in its approval of the project in the Reyes Peak area of Pine Mountain, a recreational spot critical for endangered California condors and home to other sensitive wildlife and old-growth forest.

Los Padres ForestWatch, Keep Sespe Wild, Earth Island Institute, American Alpine Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Patagonia Works and California Chaparral Institute filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Ojai and county officials filed similar lawsuits.

“Pine Mountain must be protected, not offered up to logging companies using loopholes that make a mockery of our bedrock environmental laws," said Jeff Kuyper, ForestWatch executive director.

Among the charges, the lawsuits say the agency wrongly relied on a law that exempts certain projects from broader environmental review, short-circuiting public involvement and consideration of less harmful alternatives.

Los Padres officials declined to comment about pending litigation.

Last year, the Forest Service signed off on the plan to clear thick stands of chaparral and cut down pine and fir trees. Doing so would help protect against big wildfires, providing a spot where firefighters could make a stand, the Forest Service has said.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

A federal appeals court blocked a commercial logging project in a roadless area of the Los Padres National Forest today, siding with three conservation groups to protect 1,100 acres of old-growth forest actively used by endangered California condors.

“This ruling is a big victory for the Antimony Roadless Area, which covers about 68% of the project area, and an even bigger win for the endangered California condors that have been roosting there for the past several years,” said Bryant Baker, conservation director for Los Padres ForestWatch.

Under federal law, logging in roadless areas is limited to small trees. In today’s ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the U.S. Forest Service plan to cut down numerous trees up to 21-inches in diameter along Tecuya Ridge in the Antimony Roadless Area violated the law.

“This decision upholds the sanctity of the Roadless Rule, which protects some of the last remaining wild places in our national forests from harmful logging practices,” said Justin Augustine, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The previous administration made a reckless decision to OK cutting down trees in a remote area that contains prime habitat for California condors, California spotted owls and northern goshawks. Since the Biden administration values our roadless areas and wildlife, I expect they’ll ensure this beautiful forest remains protected, not commercially logged.”