Forest Plan 2011 Litigation

Case 1:11-cv-00340-ABJ 

Biodiversity Conservation Alliance et al. v. U.S. Forest Service 

Federal District Court in Wyoming 

Complaint, October 28, 2011 

Plaintiffs' Opening Brief, May 8, 2012 

Conservationists challenge logging on Black Hills National Forest 

November 3, 2011 

LARAMIE – Last Friday, four conservation groups launched a legal challenge before the U.S. District Court of Wyoming against the Forest Service’s failure to provide sufficient habitat to maintain viable populations of native plants and wildlife on the Black Hills National Forest. The lawsuit brings a direct challenge to a Forest Plan that allows extreme levels of logging and fails to provide balance in the form of safeguards for declining plants and wildlife and their habitats. “The level of logging on the Black Hills National Forest has been so excessive for so long that wildlife habitat is getting wiped out across much of the Forest, and animals from land snails to northern goshawks to American martens have declined to the point where they may disappear,” said John Persell, Staff Attorney with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance who is representing the groups on the case. “The Forest Service promised in a legal settlement that it would amend the Forest Plan to add protections that guarantee wildlife viability throughout the Forest, but it didn't live up to its end of the agreement..”
 
 
 "Decades of over-logging and over-grazing, accompanied by knee-jerk fire suppression, have decimated wildlife habitat in the Black Hills,” added Brian Brademeyer, Black Hills Regional Director for Native Ecosystems Council. “It is high time to go in a new direction, one of cooperation with natural processes rather than more suppression and futile attempts at control."
 
 
 Conservation groups originally won an appeal of the 1997 Black Hills Forest Plan, when the Chief of the Forest Service was forced to concede that the approved Plan didn’t maintain viable populations of native wildlife throughout the Forest. But when the Phase 2 Amendment was completed in 2005, it ramped up logging to even higher levels and failed to provide the agreed-upon protections for forest wildlife.
 
 
 “The Black Hills national Forest is aggressively managed for timber and livestock output,” said Nancy Hilding of the Prairie Hills Audubon Society. “This results in loss of habitats and species not served by such lopsided management. The Chief of the Forest Service told the Black Hills National Forest to fix inadequate protections in the Black Hills for some ‘at risk’ species and habitats through plan amendments. The Phase 2 Amendment was hijacked by the Black Hills National Forest and used substantially to serve other goals of forest management. We seek to achieve parity and equity for aspects of biodiversity that are lost in the shuffle”
 
 
 The Black Hills is one of the nation’s most heavily-logged National Forests. The lawsuit also challenges the Forest Service’s failure to prevent overgrazing from degrading plant and animal species habitat on Black Hills National Forest lands.
 
 
“If the federal government came into your home and gave a big corporation permission to destroy it, you wouldn’t be very happy,” said Dick Artley, a retired Forest Service employee. “The Black Hills National Forest is home to wildlife unable to speak to defend their homes. But the Forest Supervisor in the Black Hills chooses to serve the resource extraction corporations, not the public.”
 
 
 “The Black Hills are a unique island of forest ecosystems in the midst of the High Plains, with a combination of unique species and plant communities from the Rocky Mountains, boreal forests of the Far North, and eastern deciduous woodlands,” added Persell. “This rare and rich combination of plants and wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth, and is a national treasure that deserves our most careful stewardship.”
 
 
 In addition to challenging the legality of the Black Hills Forest Plan amendment, the lawsuit calls for a halt to certain timber sales and grazing projects. Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Prairie Hills Audubon Society, Western Watersheds Project, and Native Ecosystems Council are the groups bringing the lawsuit.