COLUMBUS, Ohio – Conservation groups today sued the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management over plans to permit hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in Ohio’s only national forest, the Wayne. The lawsuit aims to void BLM leases and halt fracking in the national forest. Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Columbus, charges that the agencies failed to analyze threats to …
This week’s guest on Open Mic is Tom Martin, President and CEO of the American Forest Foundation. In this week’s interview Martin explains forest owners desire to amend federal policy to treat wildfires as natural disasters preserving funding for land conservation and stewardship programs. Martin explains how estate taxes threaten family forest owners and says amendments to corporate taxes …
The lawsuit asks that the court prohibit the federal agency from denying mineral exploration permits to Twin Metals. But the Interior Department attorneys, joining an argument filed by environmental groups earlier this month, said the suit is premature because no decision has been made that can be challenged. The motion, filed in federal court in the Twin Cities, will have to wait, however.
Helena-Lewis Clark National Forest has decided to withdraw a controversial change in elk security requirements in the Divide area near Helena that sportsmen’s groups argued in a lawsuit could have negatively impacted big-game habitat. The Divide Area west of Helena includes about 155,480 acres of public land located in Lewis and Clark and Powell counties. In March, the Forest Service removed the Big Game 4a standard. That standard required secure areas for elk and other big game species on …
An environmental group has sued the U.S. Forest Service, arguing that a plan to thin trees surrounding popular Walton Lake in Ochoco National Forest needed a fuller environmental review and public comment process. The nonprofit League of Wilderness Defenders’ lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Oregon argued that the Forest Service had illegally avoided an environmental review of the …
After a Monday hearing in federal court, a United States district court judge is
set to determine whether a lawsuit challenging magistrates’ rights to recuse themselves from performing same-sex weddings will go forward.