Environmentalists filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging a Trump administration timber sale in eastern Oregon in litigation that could have broader repercussions.
If the case succeeds, groups say it won’t just stop logging in one small site. It could throw hundreds of land management plans — and permits issued under them — into question across the country.
The lawsuit filed by Cascadia Wildlands — which is represented by nonprofit environmental law firm Silvix Resources — is seizing on Congress’ unprecedented use of a Clinton-era rule-killing law to selectively throw out resource management plans on public lands that Republican lawmakers want to see opened to coal leasing, drilling and other activities.
By applying the Congressional Review Act to those plans, lawmakers effectively put into question all land management plans adopted after the CRA became law in 1996, greens say. Democrats have made the same argument on Capitol Hill.
