REGION
A6 — THE OBSERVER
SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 2022
Lawsuit seeks to overturn decision
to allow logging of large, live trees
The Observer
PENDLETON — Six
conservation groups fi led a
federal lawsuit on Tuesday,
June 14, seeking to overturn
a decision made in the fi nal
days of the Trump adminis-
tration that canceled a rule
banning logging of large, live
trees on national forests east
of the Cascades.
The plaintiff s, who fi led
the suit in U.S. District
Court in Pendleton, con-
tend that the decision from
January 2021, just before
Trump left offi ce, violates
the National Environmental
Policy Act and National
Forest Management Act.
Specifi cally, the plain-
tiff s argue that the federal
government should have
written an environmental
impact statement to consider
the potential eff ects of the
decision, and that the public
should have had more oppor-
tunities to comment on and
object to the proposal.
“It’s no surprise the
Trump administration
ignored the science when
it pushed this rule change
through on its way out the
door,” Chris Krupp of Wil-
dEarth Guardians of New
Mexico, one of the plaintiff s,
said in a press release. “Cut-
ting down the remaining
big trees harms salmon,
steelhead and bull trout by
removing shade and forest
cover that keeps rivers and
streams cool.”
“Large trees play a critical
role in supporting biodiver-
sity, clean water and native
fi sh. It is important to retain
all remaining large trees as
they are scarce on the land-
scape after a century of high-
grade timber harvests that
targeted large, old trees,” said
Amy Stuart with the Great
Old Broads for Wilderness, a
Montana nonprofi t that’s also
a plaintiff .
The other plaintiff s
are Greater Hells Canyon
Council of La Grande,
Oregon Wild, Central
The Observer, File
Spectators look on from Island Avenue in Island City during the Ag-
Timber Parade Friday, May 21, 2021. Six conservation groups fi led
a federal lawsuit Tuesday, June 14, 2022, seeking to prevent the
logging of large, live trees on national forests east of the Cascades in
a move to reverse a decision from the Trump administration.
Oregon Landwatch and the
Sierra Club.
The lawsuit names as
defendants Homer Wilkes,
undersecretary for nat-
ural resources and envi-
ronment, and Glenn Casa-
massa, regional forester for
the Forest Service’s Region
6, which includes national
forests in Oregon and
Washington.
The U.S. Forest Service
said it doesn’t comment on
pending or active lawsuits.
Both the lawsuit and the
2021 decision that prompted
the complaint involve what’s
known as the “21-inch rule.”
That was one of several
provisions that constituted
the eastside screens, which
date to 1995. The Forest Ser-
vice instituted the screens in
response to concerns from
environmental groups about
the declining amount of old
growth timber on national
forests east of the Cascade
Mountains in Oregon and
Washington.
That includes the Wal-
lowa-Whitman, Umatilla and
Malheur national forests in
Northeastern Oregon.
The 21-inch rule restricted
the cutting of live trees larger
than 21 inches in diam-
eter, measured four and a
half feet above the ground,
with rare exceptions such
as cutting trees that posed
a threat to the public near a
campground.
Forest Service offi cials
initially proposed in June
2020 to replace the 21-inch
rule with a new policy that
would apply on the Wal-
lowa-Whitman, Umatilla,
Malheur, Ochoco, Deschutes
and Fremont-Winema
national forests in Oregon.
The offi cial policy change,
which aff ected about 8 mil-
lion acres of public land, hap-
pened Jan. 15, 2021.
In the lawsuit, the plain-
tiff s contend that proposed
logging projects on each of
the six national forests would
take advantage of the end of
the 21-inch rule and include
logging of larger trees.
The plaintiff s are asking
a judge to issue an injunc-
tion prohibiting the Forest
Service from pursuing those
projects. One of those, the
Morgan Nesbit project on the
Wallowa-Whitman south-
east of Joseph, proposes log-
ging trees larger than 21
inches. The project was pro-
posed in December 2020 and
a fi nal decision on whether
to pursue it is slated for Jan-
uary 2024, according to the
lawsuit.
The lawsuit was fi led by
Meriel L. Darzen and Oliver
J.H. Stiefel of the Craig Law
Center in Portland.
The plaintiff s say the larger
trees protected by the 21-inch
rule “play a critical role in
maintaining biodiversity and
mitigating climate change.”
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