Logging Plan, Logging Halt

A group of 22 organizations is calling for a federal judge to halt all logging in national forests until the U.S. Forest Service completes a management plan that was due three years ago. A lawsuit filed in the US District Court in San Francisco alleges that the Forest Service is violating a law that requires it to write such a plan every five years. Forest Service officials cite a legal contradiction. They say a rider Congress tacked on to last year’s appropriations bill prohibits the service from spending any money to prepare such a plan. Steve Curwood asked Dan Rohlf, a law professor at Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Oregon, if this case could shut down logging on federal lands.