Legal Decisions
In March, 2011, the Federal District Court ruled that the Secretary of Interior had acted illegally when he “withdrew” the 2008 Western Oregon Plan Revisions adopted by the Bureau of Land Management in 2009. This decision reinstates the Plan Revisions until the BLM goes through another planning process.
Assessment to reflect the “immediate need” to “reduc[e] the risk of large-scale loss in a portion of the existing late and old-structure stands that are susceptible to insect attack and/or wildfire.” The objective of the Forest Service’s Project is to reduce that risk, in part, by thinning some of the trees in the Davis LSR. Objection to this logging component of the Project is the gravamen of the Conservation Groups’ complaint.
The Lands Council and Wild West Institute (collectively, Lands Council) moved for a preliminary injunction to halt the Mission Brush Project (the Project), which called for the selective logging of 3,829 acres of forest in the Idaho Panhan- dle National Forest (IPNF). As the basis for the preliminary injunction, Lands Council claimed that Ranotta McNair and the United States Forest Service (collectively, the Forest Ser-vice), failed to comply with the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), 16 U.S.C. § 1600 et seq., the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. § 4231 et seq., and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 701 et seq., in developing and implementing the Project.
