Lawsuit meant to protect forests and wildlife from destructive logging and fire danger

It is unclear why an investment banker and an Oregon logging advocate chose to write about the Pacific fisher lawsuit in the southern Sierra Nevada as they did in The Bee on May 12. Notably, they did not discuss the loss and logging of old growth forests for the benefit of the timber industry and at the detriment of the American people and our unique species.

When old trees are logged, our forests are made less fire safe and the integrity of the entire ecosystem and all the wildlife that depends upon it is put at risk, especially the Pacific fisher. The female fisher needs large living trees and snags to reproduce. As the agencies go forth with the same logging plans they had prior to the endangered species listing, which include the logging of old trees, they risk putting the fisher on the brink of extinction.

Our lawsuit is a necessity to stop the Forest Service from logging our last large living trees and snags. It is also necessary to prevent ongoing management actions that further decimate the landscape, including the construction and reconstruction of hundreds of miles of roads, the mastication of native plant species, and the application of herbicides to kill native plant species, which naturally rebound in a post-fire landscape. In addition, aggressive post-fire logging has already set back forest recovery, and it could occur again, if unchallenged.

For Unite the Parks, this is our first lawsuit. The workload on such an undertaking is enormous. We must evaluate 45 logging projects spread over two massive forests. We must know what is happening on the ground and at the agency, and work within a complex system of American laws, which are set up to protect dying species. Finally, there is the science, which must be understood completely.

Did Longatti and Smith do the reading on this case and endeavor to understand agency actions, as we have, prior to writing their essay and reiterating common myths?

We support the idea of collaboration. But as an aspect of Forest Service management, it fails to adequately protect the environment, and many environmental groups that once supported collaboratives have stopped participating in them, as such. Ultimately, the forest supervisor makes the final decision on USFS matters, regardless of comments made in opposition to chosen actions, such as spraying carcinogenic herbicides across the landscape to kill native plant species. If participating in them was an effective use of our time, we’d put our energy there. It’s not.

The ongoing assertion that logging projects (including road-building, mastication, herbicide application, logging of large living trees) make the forest fire safe lacks substantial evidence to support it. In the southern Sierra Nevada, we have the advantage of two beautiful National Parks, which are about 95 percent wilderness, and as such, thinning is rarely implemented. Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings have about the same topography and climate as our forests, but they did not burn up last year — to the tune of a half a million acres. If logging was an effective fire deterrent, the situation would be the reverse.

Finally, the fisher population is extraordinarily low — there may be 250 individuals left. The last fisher population count was made prior to the beetle-kill, the drought, the cumulative fires across the landscape, and the large expansive fires of 2020, which altogether altered 50 percent of its remaining habitat.

We have asked USFS to re-evaluate forest conditions and to get an adequate grasp on the fisher population, before moving ahead with logging, and they have refused again and again. This is why we are forced to sue.

This story was originally published May 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM.