8/13/2020 -- On August 3rd, a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit provided a win for the Humboldt conservation group, Environmental Protection Information Center, or EPIC, which advocates for the protection and restoration of Northwest California’s forests, against the US Forest Service and Sierra Pacific Industries, which is the second largest lumber producer in the United States.
The court approved EPIC’s request for a preliminary injunction, essentially a pause, on the United States Forest Service’s Ranch Fire Roadside Hazard Tree Project while the case is pending. The project allowed the Forest Service to request bids from privately owned logging companies for the right to remove trees within 200 feet of roads in Mendocino National Forest that were damaged by the 2018 Ranch Fire, authorizing the logging of millions of board feet of timber on nearly 4,700 acres of National Forest land. This was a reversal of an earlier district court decision.