Contact:
Stephanie Johnson, Sierra Club volunteer 650-380-1308
Clyde Hanson, Sierra Club volunteer 218-387-9081
Sierra Club goes to court to improve the Superior National Forest Plan
Lawsuit Aims To Protect Natural Ecosystems in the Boundary Waters Wilderness and Rest of Superior National ForestMinneapolis — Today a coalition of conservation groups went to court to challenge the USDA Forest Service's Land and Resources Plan for the Superior National Forest. The groups aim to ensure that the logging prescribed in the plan — averaging 20 square miles per year — does not harm the wilderness canoe area. The lawsuit also seeks to reinstate discontinued wildlife censuses that had held the agency accountable for preventing negative impacts from its taxpayer-subsidized commercial logging program.
"The Forest Plan in its current form will not sufficiently protect the wilderness and wilderness values," said John Roth, Executive Director of the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness (BWCAW).
Since the Plan was issued in 2004, the Forest Service and the Department of Natural Resources have proposed thousands of acres of clearcut logging within a quarter mile of the boundary waters. The groups' suit points out that there will be an echo effect from this logging, with negative impacts inside the BWCAW.
Under the plan, half of the last remaining roadless areas in Minnesota are open for logging. These would be some of the first roadless areas in the national forest system to be logged since the Bush administration reversed the Clinton administration's popular Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Most of these roadless areas are adjacent to the BWCAW.
"Minnesotans overwhelmingly wanted these wild areas protected from logging, and supported the conservation rule. These places are sanctuaries for people and wildlife, and ensure clean water," said Clyde Hanson, Chair of Sierra Club's National Forest Protection and Restoration Campaign. "But this plan allows logging roads through roadless areas right to the doorstep of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. These roads can result in motorized trespassing inside the wilderness, and they become passageways for damaging invasive species like buckthorn, spotted knapweed and gypsy moths to enter and degrade the wilderness."
The lawsuit also aims to end a scientifically unsupported method proposed by the Forest Service to estimate the logging plan's impact on wildlife. The Forest Service is required to maintain species diversity in the forest by designating "management indicator species" that represent the health of their part of the ecosystem. The previous forest plan identified 34 indicator wildlife species; the new Plan studies only three animals and one tree to perform this important role.
"At a time when global warming is stressing the boreal forest wildlife in the Superior National Forest, we need more and better measurements of wildlife populations, not less," said Roth.
The lawsuit also challenges the quality of the Forest Service's analysis of inventoried roads and trails and its failure to make corrections submitted by the public.
Other groups filing the challenge include Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness and Defenders of Wildlife. For more information on the conservation groups' challenge and background on the Superior National Forest Plan, visit http://northstar.sierraclub.org/campaigns/forests/plan.