(The Center Square) – The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon announced that an order giving summary judgment in favor of the U.S. Forest Service was entered in a civil case against the agency’s commercial thinning of timber conducted as part of a forest restoration effort in the Fremont-Winema National Forest.
Between December 2021 to May 2022, the Forest Service approved three restoration projects spanning over 91,000 acres in the Fremont-Winema National Forest designed to lower the risk of severe wildfire in dry forestlands and to improve the health and habitats of degraded forests.
The agency proposed doing the following to meet its restoration goals “small tree thinning, prescribed burning, juniper cutting, meadow enhancement, stream restoration, and the commercial sale of select forest products,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon said in the release.
The Forest Service approved between 3,000 and 16,000 acres of commercial thinning for all three of its restoration projects.
“Commercial and non-commercial thinning are longstanding timber management tools the Forest Service uses to improve timber stand growth and reduce fire hazard through the removal of select trees in overly dense and deteriorated stands,” the release said. “The Fremont-Winema National Forest has recently suffered from major wildfires, including the 400,000-acre Bootleg Fire in 2021.”.
Oregon Wild and WildEarth Guardians, two non-profit corporations, filed the lawsuit in July last year, challenging the Forest Service for using commercial thinning in its restoration projects. The organizations allege that the Forest Service is violating the Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael J. McShane issued a summary judgment order earlier this month that said the Forest Service did not violate the laws.
“The court found the Forest Service’s use of NEPA procedures to approve the projects was lawful and reasonably determined,” the release said.
