ForestWatch Recognized for Top Environmental Achievement

Last Year's Victory Protecting Alamo Mountain & Grade Valley from Commercial Logging Sets an Important Legal Precedent That Extends Throughout the West

Our legal victory last year protected fragile burn areas on Alamo Mountain and Grade Valley from a commercial logging operation, and now it’s being hailed as one of the top five environmental achievements in southern California. The 5th Annual Top Achievements of the Environmental Community in Southern California report recognizes ForestWatch for setting an important legal precedent that extends to national forests throughout the state and the West, fundamentally changing how the Forest Service responds to the post-fire landscape.

The Day Fire of 2006 swept through a significant portion of the Sespe Wilderness in Ventura’s backcountry. Shortly thereafter, the Forest Service announced a plan to use commercial logging companies to remove more than 1,430 old-growth conifer trees from a portion of the burn area. The Forest Service refused to prepare an Environmental Assessment before approving the timber sale, invoking a loophole that classified the project as “road maintenance” instead of “salvage logging.” Such an interpretation clearly violated federal environmental laws, leaving us with little choice but to file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court.

The judge promptly ruled in our favor (click here to read our previous story), concluding that the project was clearly “salvage logging” and directing the Forest Service to either prepare an EA or to dramatically scale back the project. Using the loophole for projects of this magnitude, the judge ruled, was illegal.

This ruling established a powerful precedent extending far beyond the Los Padres. Shortly after our case was decided, another judge cited our case — Los Padres ForestWatch v. U.S. Forest Service — in ruling against the logging of more than 15,000 large trees from the Sierra Nevada.

The report highlights the most significant successes in the environmental community in 2008, and is prepared each year by Environment Now, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit foundation.

Click here to read the full report - the ForestWatch victory is featured on pages 12-13.

“The Los Padres remains a role model, showing that national forests can be valued more for recreation, wildlife habitat, and clean water, rather than resource extraction.”

Rep. Lois Capps, House Natural Resources
Subcommittees on Forests and Public Lands
 

“Closing this loophole is an outstanding achievement because of the particularly destructive nature of logging after fire, which removes or disables resources vital to the process of ecosystem recovery and to biodiversity that uses burned forests.”

Dr. Dennis Odion, an expert in wildlife
severity and vegetative response at UCSB
 

“This is a classic tale of how a grassroots organization can influence federal forest policy, not only protecting our local forest, but also
national forests throughout California.”

Jeff Kuyper, ForestWatch
Executive Director