Judge halts timber sale near Crater Lake for second time

A lawsuit brought by two environmental groups successfully halted a logging project in Southern Oregon for a second time.

District Court judge Jolie A. Russo ruled last week that Umpqua National Forest must conduct a more comprehensive study of environmental impacts caused by the Loafer timber sale.

The project would authorize 1,400 acres of commercial thinning and 5.6 miles of temporary roads near popular recreation sites such as Umpqua Hot Springs and the North Umpqua Trail, northwest of Crater Lake National Park.

Russo ruled that the project, which was also delayed in 2014 following a lawsuit, could not go forward until an environmental impact statement had been prepared.

Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild, the two groups that brought the lawsuit, celebrated the judge’s decision.

"Not only would this timber sale impact popular recreation opportunities, but it bulldozes its way into remote backcountry areas that deserve to be wilderness," said Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator at Oregon Wild. Heiken noted that the timber sale was within the boundaries of the group’s Crater Lake Wilderness Proposal.

Lawson Fite, general counsel for the American Forest Resource Council, which intervened in the lawsuit, disagreed with the decision.

He said the project was located largely in an area designated for timber production and was aimed at “thinning overstocked forests, restoring meadows, and making the landscape more resilient to fire.”

“The court’s decision continues a concerning trend of requiring the Forest Service to prepare costly and time- consuming Environmental Impact Statements, typically reserved for major infrastructure projects like highways, for small forest projects with negligible or beneficial environmental effects,” Fite said in an email.

Read the decision below: