Campaigns

Protecting Our Sierra Nevada

In Brief: Our campaign to protect the last remaining old-growth trees and imperiled wildife in the National Forests of California


Image mosaic of CA spotted owl, Yosemite toad, mountain yellow-legged frog, Pacific fisher
CA spotted owl, Yosemite toad, mountain yellow-legged frog, Pacific fisher

There are twenty million acres of national forests in California, encompassing craggy mountains, rushing rivers, and lush forests. Battles have raged for well over a century over how many of the trees to cut and how many to preserve. In early 2001, following years of study, negotiation, and compromise, the Forest Service produced what came to be called the Sierra Framework, a management plan for the 11 national forests in the Sierra Nevada mountain range [roughly 11 million acres]. The Framework stressed brush removal and thinning of overgrown forests near vulnerable communities (like the Southern California ones that suffered so horribly from wildfire in the summer of 2003). The plan applied an ecosystem approach to forest management and took special care to protect dwindling old growth forests, which provide habitat for the rare California spotted owl.

Then came the Bush administration and the Forest Service lurched back to its previous bias toward logging above all else. The agency announced that it would reconsider the framework. In January 2004, the agency floated a new plan. More than 6,000 people wrote to urge the agency to stick with the original plan, but the pleas fell on deaf ears.

On November 18, 2004, the Forest Service formally affirmed the new plan. It removes protections for spotted owl habitat, allows logging of large-diameter trees (that is, the most valuable ones, both economically and biologically), and, in general, would allow nearly three times the amount of logging as the original Framework envisioned.

To make matters worse, Governor Schwarzenegger, who had promised to protect California’s forests in his election campaign, hinted that he supported the Forest Service’s new plan. The state attorney general, however, branded the new plan illegal and challenged it in court. That suit was filed within days of Earthjustice attorneys filing their own challenge on behalf of a huge coalition of organizations that share the common goal of ensuring that our national forests are managed responsibly.

In 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a preliminary injunction that fould the Bush revisions to the Framework illegal for not having considered an adequate range of alternatives concerning forest management. In July 2008, the trial court confirmed what the appeals court had suggested -- that the plan does not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.

These cases continue to wind through the courts.