PRESS RELEASE of February 12, 1999 (Rick Landenberger posted this on WISe)

Today, the National Forests in Alabama suspended all timber sales on all four forests due to "irregularities" found in the timber sale program for the Shoal Creek Ranger District in the Talladega National Forest. A phone conversation by Wild Alabama Executive Director Lamar Marshall with the Regional ForesterÆs Office in Atlanta confirmed that this action by the Forest Service is due, in part, to the years of work and litigation done by Wild Alabama and WildLaw over illegal timber sales on all the National Forests in Alabama. According to the Forest Service, this action shutting down the forests was the result of three things: (1) years of appeals and litigation by Wild Alabama and WildLaw showing violations of numerous laws, (2) the recent Inspector GeneralÆs report showing violations of federal laws in virtually every National Forest timber sale they examined in Virginia and Mississippi, and (3) inside reports from courageous Forest Service employees who confirmed what we and the Inspector General have been saying. The Inspector GeneralÆs report is a scathing indictment of the Forest ServiceÆs gross noncompliance with the environmental laws. It can be downloaded at http://www.usda.gov/oig/auditrpt/auditrpt.htm

WildLaw and its Executive Director Ray Vaughan have worked on protecting the National Forests in Alabama since the mid-1980s; since the early 1990s, that work has been on behalf of Wild Alabama and the Alabama Wilderness Alliance. In that time we have caught (and proven successfully in court and in administrative appeals) the Forest Service doing the following:

a.. Failing to consider numerous direct, indirect and cumulative impacts of their timber sales, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act(NEPA);

b.. Failing to protect endangered, rare species and migratory birds;

c.. Violating the National Historic Preservation Act by not protecting historic Native American sites on the Bankhead National Forest;

d.. Using up to 19 times the legal limit of herbicides on the National Forests; and

e.. Converting natural forests into pine plantations.

Since 1995, legal work by WildLaw and Wild Alabama have halted timber sales on more than 55,000 acres of public lands in the National Forests in Alabama. Just two weeks ago, Regional Forester Elizabeth Estill ruled in our favor in two timber sales on the Talladega, due to the Forest ServiceÆs failure to comply with NEPA and consider impacts to migratory song birds.

Next week, Ray Vaughan and Lamar Marshall are scheduled to meet with Regional Forester Estill to discuss this situation. Since we do work in all the National Forests of the region through the organization Wild South, we intend to tell her that every National Forest in the South has these same kind of problems. We will insist that she shut down timber sales on all National Forests in the South, from Texas to Virginia. Ray Vaughan says, "The Forest Service needs to clean house, the whole house; starting with the room Alabama is good, but cleaning up just one filthy room will not do the job." According to Lamar Marshall, "This shut down vindicates the many years of hard work we have done surveying, watching and litigating over destructive and illegal Forest Service practices. We may have been a lone voice howling in the wilderness once, but now, everyone knows we were right about something being very wrong with how the Forest Service manages our public lands in Alabama."

For more information, contact Ray Vaughan at WildLaw, 334/265-6529, or Lamar Marshall at Wild Alabama, 256/974-3166.