(SACRAMENTO) A northern California environmental group filed a legal challenge in federal court today, seeking a halt to a much-contested logging project south of Hayfork on the Shasta-Trinity national forest.

The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) won an appeal of the East Fork timber sale earlier this year. Regional Forester Jack Blackwell sent the plan back both because it did not discuss the impacts on wildlife of logging old growth trees and because it did not show how the agency would comply with stream-protection requirements. The Shasta-Trinity national forest added some pages to the project record, but refused to change the proposed action to make it less damaging to wildlife. A second appeal was rejected, leaving conservationists to choose between litigation and allowing an illegal timber sale to go ahead.

The proposed East Fork timber sale, also called Texas Spider by the Forest Service, would cut more than 10 million board feet (roughly two thousand log truck loads) from two thousand acres on the East Fork of the South Fork Trinity River. It would log in both the riparian and the late successional reserve areas which are supposed to be off-limits to commercial logging under the regional Northwest Forest Plan. The lawsuit charges that, though the Forest Service admits that the proposed logging would hurt fish and wildlife, the agency does not have good data to actually weigh those impacts as required by law. As well, critics of the timber sale point out that the agency didn't seriously consider any options other than commercial logging.

According to Scott Greacen, EPIC's national forest advocate, the Forest Service is trying to justify the project as `fuels reduction,' even though the proposed logging could actually result in increased fire risks. "The Shasta-Trinity national forest has created a logging plan, taking as many trees as they can, and dressed it up in a yellow shirt," Greacen said, "but it doesn't actually target the key fuels which promote high-intensity fires, which are ground fuels and the small-diameter ladder fuels."

The proposed sale would instead cut mature and old-growth trees deep in the backcountry. Against the backdrop of the destructive fires that have struck communities around Redding and the Shasta-Trinity in recent weeks, the proposed sale highlights a disconnect in federal forest-fire policy that goes right to the top. "The Bush Administration wants to spend millions to promote destructive logging," Greacen noted, "but they've slashed funding for programs that address wildfire threats to homes and communities."

Though the administration has used the fear of wildfire to restrict citizen's rights to fight bad logging projects, in the Bush Administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2005, the program that supports community fire protection was cut by $82 million, a cut of 37%. An effort by California Senator Feinstein and others to restore full funding to the Community and Private Lands Fire Assistance Program failed because it was not supported by the White House and Congressional Republicans. By contrast, funding for Forest Service timber sales--which routinely lose money--was increased by $9 million.

The lawsuit filed today seeks to force the agency to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement. In preparing only an Environmental Assessment for the sale, the Forest Service has asserted that the logging would have "no significant impact" on the environment. Greacen said the agency can't show that's true, and should err on the side of caution when our childrens' heritage is at stake. "This sale will log the reserves we've set up to protect fish and wildlife. The Forest Service even admits that it will harm species like the fisher, the goshawk, the northern spotted owl, and the salmon, which depend on intact, mature forests. In other words, we're taking away homes for threatened wildlife, and we're not protecting peoples' homes. It's the worst of both worlds."