Posted on 02/21/2003 11:16:25 AM PST by madfly
Celebrity attorney Johnny Cochrane, magical frogs and vampires did not translate Friday into permission to cut more than 15,000 burned and hazardous trees in Eastern Oregon's Malheur National Forest.
U.S. District Judge Ancer L. Haggerty quickly rejected arguments by federal and timber industry attorneys that environmental groups use one-size-fits-all legal arguments as their personal "magical incantations" to shut down logging on public lands.
Haggerty shut down six of seven timber sales in the Malheur after finding that the U.S. Forest Service had illegally tried to squeeze the sales through a procedural shortcut that permits pruning and clearing of roadside brush. He allowed one sale along a busy county road to remove trees that could fall on the road.
The move blocked the same kind of shortcut the Bush administration has proposed using to speed small logging and thinning projects.
It was the fourth logging project Haggerty has stopped in Eastern and Central Oregon in the past year on the grounds that federal foresters had not thoroughly examined the environmental impacts. Each was contested by Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, based in Wheeler County.
A lawyer for D.R. Johnson Lumber Co., which bought four of the seven Malheur sales, had contended that the environmental group applied boilerplate arguments from the other cases to stop the Malheur cutting when it was in the best interest of public safety.
Attorney Michael Dundy likened the environmental group's arguments, involving ecological damage from logging burned trees, to "magical incantations" he recalled from a childhood television show featuring a frog that granted children's wishes.
Dundy said the group's goal is "to eliminate any human involvement whatsoever in the management of national forest lands." The group he said, "wants to condition the courts of Oregon so that when they utter the magic words, there is only one right way of deciding the case."
When he hears the group advancing such arguments, he said, he thinks of movies "where citizens of Transylvania will hold up a crucifix to ward off the vampires."
"It's like a one-size-fits-all glove that can be used at any time," he said.
But, "if it doesn't fit," Dundy said, the judge must deny the request to stop the sales. He echoed the argument of O.J. Simpson attorney Johnny Cochrane that "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
Haggerty bought none of it.
Instead, he said the Forest Service could have easily completed a public review so the Malheur logging could proceed legally. Cutting the 15,000 trees -- about 1.7 million board feet -- violates a federal provision that allows pruning and removal of limited trees that involve minimal environmental impacts, he said.
Enviral Judicial think: Let the forest burn because a bulldozer might dig up a piece of ground as it puts a fireline around a raging inferno. Let dead trees stand because we don't want anybody to make a profit.
Land of the free...yeah, right.
Judge Haggerty was appointed a United States District Court Judge for the District of Oregon by President Clinton on March 28, 1994.
I guess no further explanation is necessary.
If the trees weren't useless by the time the review was done the marxist would appeal until they were.
I hope everyone is sitting down...A Humboldt County jury found one of the lizard like bimbo tree sitters guilty of trespassing on PL property. She was taken out of the tree by climbers. I'm sure she will sue PL for harassment and a jury somewhere else will award her millions. I heard there are 25 tree sitters on PL property.
Then they can start repealing some of the asinine laws used by the enviro-nazis to thwart responsible land use.
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