A federal judge has thrown out an environmental lawsuit that claimed a 40,000-acre forest project in Eastern Oregon unlawfully authorized the harvest of large trees.

In 2020, the U.S. Forest Service approved amendments to the Malheur National Forest’s management plan, allowing trees larger than 21 inches in diameter to be logged as part of the Camp Lick project.

Harvest of such large trees was otherwise banned at the time under the “Eastside Screens” rule that applied to six national forests. Though the prohibition was replaced by more flexible guidelines in 2021, a federal magistrate judge recently determined that decision was unlawful.

A complaint filed by the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project nonprofit claimed logging large trees within the Camp Lick project was “driven by economic interests rather than true forest restoration,” requiring site-specific forest plan amendments that violated forest management law.

Within the project’s boundaries, the Forest Service permitted 31,000 acres of prescribed burning and 12,000 acres of thinning, which included commercial logging on more than 8,000 acres.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut has now agreed with a federal magistrate judge’s recommendation to reject those arguments and dismiss the case because the forest plan was properly amended.

“The limited and specific scope of these amendments supports the Service’s choice to geographically limit these amendments and retain the Screens as they are written for the general Forest,” according to U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Hallman.

While the project area had historically been dominated by ponderosa pine and western larch trees common in dry forests, 160 years of fire suppression resulted in denser stands that included more shade-tolerant firs.

The Forest Service decided the Eastside Screens would have prohibited the logging of large fir trees, making it “difficult or impossible to achieve desired species composition,” which compelled the agency to amend the forest plan.

Plaintiff’s case

The environmental plaintiff claimed these site-specific amendments weren’t justified because they dealt with forest-wide management issues that weren’t unique to the project area.

The lawsuit argued such amendments can only address site-specific concerns under the National Forest Management Act, preventing the government from abandoning a forest plan on a piecemeal basis without studying the broader implications.

That argument didn’t pass muster with the judge, who ruled that “unique characteristics” are a valid reason for site-specific amendments but they’re “not the only conceivable rational basis” for such revisions.

The Forest Service intended to apply the Eastside Screens to the vast majority of the national forest, as the amendments applied to only 2.4% of its 1.7 million acres and allowed the removal of “a very small, specific subset of large trees” even within that area, the judge said.

“Because this tailoring and nuanced analysis are better conducted at the site-specific level, it provides a rational basis for not amending the plan generally,” the ruling said. “The Camp Lick amendment is tailored to the specific area, and the record supports it would not apply to the forest generally.”

Because the amendments were established with a “rational site-specific basis” and didn’t have a significant environmental impact, they weren’t subject to additional analysis requirements under the National Forest Management Act or the National Environmental Policy Act, the judge said.

The ruling rejected several other allegations that Camp Lick’s approval violated NEPA, such as the government’s alleged failure to adequately analyze the cumulative effects of the amendments.

Their purpose was returning the forest to a “more historical state,” which will ultimately increase the number of large trees over time, the ruling said. “The Service has backed this conclusion with scientific studies, data, and forest reports — the Court is in no position to override it.”

Judge sides with environmental groups in ‘Eastside Screens’ case