A federal judge has rejected an environmental lawsuit that alleged an Oregon forest project unlawfully ignored the “edge effects” of logging on endangered marbled murrelets.

U.S. District Judge Michael McShane has dismissed a complaint against logging and thinning on about 1,500 acres in Coos County, which the Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild nonprofits argued violated federal environmental statutes.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management properly considered the Big Weekly Elk project’s “direct impacts” on the murrelet’s nesting habitat, which didn’t have to include the “edge effects” resulting from tree removal, according to McShane.

While the BLM’s management plan for 2.5 million acres in Western Oregon doesn’t define what it means to modify nesting habitat, there’s “convincing evidence” the phrase can “apply only to the direct actions taken within the impacted stand itself,” he said.

Otherwise, the BLM’s timber harvest calculations for the region would be rendered “meaningless” and other protections for the species would make “little sense,” the judge said.

The environmental plaintiffs may doubt “whether the short-term adverse impacts to marbled murrelet habitat” will justify what they consider “rather modest advantages to murrelet habitat in 20 years,” but such treatments are allowed under the agency’s broader regional management plan, he said.

The judge also rejected claims that BLM should’ve conducted a more expansive environmental analysis of the Big Weekly Elk project, as the treatments won’t impose “any significant adverse effects” beyond those already examined in the regional management plan.

The BLM took a sufficiently “hard look” at the project’s impacts, as requirement by federal law, and wasn’t required to consider combined effects with other proposals that were still in the planning phase, he said.

During oral arguments in the case earlier this year, the environmental plaintiffs claimed the project’s “edge effects” will be severe, as logging leaves nests in nearby trees vulnerable to predators and severe weather.

“BLM chose not to forthrightly disclose these important impacts,” said John Persell, one of their attorneys.

The BLM countered that it’s entitled to deference in interpreting how regulations apply to the project, which is meant to meet timber harvest objectives while improving environmental outcomes.

By thinning forest stands that are currently dense and uniform, BLM will enhance the murrelet’s nesting habitat over time, said Shannon Boylan, the agency’s attorney. Meanwhile, limiting such treatments will have the opposite effect.

“Plaintiffs’ interpretation is actually less protective of the species,” she said.