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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gst" data-source="post: 183803" data-attributes="member: 373">spotted  owl important........rural hamlets not so much......<a href="http://www.firefightingnews.com/environmental-group-sues-us-forest-service-questions-ability-put-wildfires/" target="_blank">http://www.firefightingnews.com/environmental-group-sues-us-forest-service-questions-ability-put-wildfires/</a>The Wolverine Fire in central Washington last summer was one of the worst wildfires on record. It started in late July of 2015 and burned until mid-September.Now, one year later, a federal lawsuit has cropped up challenging the authority of the US Forest Service to shelve environmental laws to take emergency actions during a wildfire.On Aug 16, a Eugene-based environmental group filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Spokane, saying that the “community protection line” that was built to protect rural hamlets was “unnecessary, destructive and violated the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement to assess beforehand the impact of federal actions.”While fire officials said at the time that the 50-mile long, 30-foot wide protection line was to safeguard rural areas in Chelan County – the lawsuit alleges the fire remained miles away.According to <a href="http://www.capitalpress.com/Washington/20160825/washington-fire-sparks-suit-over-federal-firefighting-powers" target="_blank">Capital Press</a>, Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics would like the Service to review how it fights fires, “before continuing to give incident commanders free reign to declare an emergency.”A spokeswoman for the Washington Forest Protection Assoc. said, “The goal is to actively manage for healthy forests so we’re not put in a position to take extreme actions, but when we have to take extreme actions, we need to have that ability to act.”According to the lawsuit, “logging, building fire lines and setting back burns are federal actions that could significantly affect the environment and require an assessment.”Building the protective line for the lighting-sparked Wolverine Fire required logging more than “100 acres of spotted owl habitat and degraded scenery along forest roads enjoyed by visitors,” the lawsuit stated.A post-fire report by the Forest Service also found that the fire harmed the environment too. Nineteen miles of fish-bearing streams were damaged and the risk of sediment eroding into critical habitats, for threatened and endangered fish species, was greatly increased.The Forest Service declined to comment on the lawsuit.</blockquote>

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