A split federal appeals court today upheld an injunction against a planned salvage logging project on public land in southwestern Oregon.
The 2-1 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocks the Bureau of Land Management's plan to allow salvage logging on 961 acres of about 12,000 acres burned by the Timbered Rock fire near Medford, Ore., in 2002.
Judge Ann Aiken of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon blocked the planned salvage project after the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildland Center and other environmentalists sued, saying the salvage sale would damage northern spotted owl habitat set aside in the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.
The environmentalists argued BLM failed to study the cumulative effects of fire suppression and salvage logging when developing the study, violating the National Environmental Policy Act. Judge Aiken and the majority of the three-judge panel agreed, also ruling BLM violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
BLM and timber industry intervenors appealed, leading to today's ruling.
Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain dissented from today's ruling, saying the district court and the appeals court judges "have inappropriately substituted their own policy views for the BLM's."
Click here to view the ruling.
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