The WildLaw Letter

For Members and Friends December 2003

End of another year and time once again for our annual request for your hard-earned cash. If the rebound in the stock market has been good to you, then you need a tax deduction. If you are concerned about what is happening to our environment with the massive assault on it now, then you need a way to help fight for it and your future. Luckily, that is what we do, and all donations are fully tax deductible.

Seriously, we could not do the work we do without your support. We are lean and efficient, and we get good things done. You can be proud of supporting WildLaw, because we fight for you and your environment without excuses and without fear.

WildLaw has had a lot of success this year. Our achievements are also yours. Highlights and accomplishments of 2003 include:

* Being the only environmental group in the nation at a major conference in DC to present an alternative to the Bush Administration's plans to gut National Forest planning regulations;

* Wining a lawsuit against the Duck River Dam in Alabama (see article below);

* Filing the only lawsuit in the nation over all three sets of new regulations from the Forest Service allowing more logging on the National Forests;

* Hiring Alyx Perry to handle the business of the Southern Forests Network (SFN) and advancing sustainable private forest lands management;

* Hosting the latest SFN meeting (see article below);

* Becoming an affiliate of the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition and providing legal counsel to SAFC and its member groups;

* Coordinating and preparing legal comments for SAFC and others on the five new management plans for National Forests in the South;

* Hosting the National Roadless Area tour in Alabama;

* Filing the petitions to protect Florida Panthers through critical habitat and to protect Florida Scrub Jays by upgrading their status to endangered;

* Filing lawsuits to stop more than 35 illegal timber sales in the National Forests;

* Recognition by business leaders of WildLaw as a key player in smart growth and eco-tourism in Alabama;

* Winning a lawsuit in the Sixth Circuit that stopped the 1,150-acre Rolling Thunder timber sale on the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan; and

* Production and distribution of a free CD-ROM that gives grassroots groups a detailed primer to the legal aspects of forest protection work and includes every case on the National Forests ever issued.

Thank you for all your support of WildLaw. We have worked out detailed strategic plans for 2004 to address the threats and seize the opportunities. We will be working in Alabama, the United States, and even internationally to help the environment. 2004 will be another exciting year for WildLaw, and we hope we can continue to count on your support. Thank you.

In the spirit of protecting the last wild places, which WildLaw has always done, we are teaming up with leading wildlife biologists working in the African country of Gabon to arrange an eco-tour of the country next summer. Eco-tourism will be a key way to save the last wild places of Africa. Scheduled for July 31 through August 8, the tour will fly directly from Atlanta to Gabon's capital

With a stable government and the highest GDP per person of any country in Central Africa, Gabon offers safety, amenities, and comforts not found in most other countries there. Yet, it also has the largest and most intact expanses of rainforests left in Africa. The stay in Libreville will be in a five-star hotel; a casino is nearby. All lodges at the various national parks we will visit have full facilities; no one will "rough it" unless they want to take part in a portion of the tour expressly providing more rigorous activities.

Recently, President Omar Bongo set aside 11% of the entire country in 13 new national parks. Having built its economy on oil and timber, Gabon is now basing its future on eco-tourism. WildLaw is the first entity in the world to organize a tour like this to Gabon. Working directly with the scientists who study Gabon, we will know how much impact the various parks there can and cannot take. We truly want this venture to validate the whole eco-tourism concept for Central Africa so as to prove to the world that rank and file Americans will support, in a economically significant number, the challenges of saving the last wild places of our planet (both the Southeast U.S. and Gabon) by going to see them and bringing their dollars with them. We want this trip to create a successful prototype so as to support the work of the scientists there and the Gabonese dream of protecting their environment and supporting their economy through eco-tourism.

WildLaw and local community leaders in the area have teamed up to form the Friends of Tuskegee National Forest. Tuskegee National Forest is a unique public land treasure in east-central Alabama. Despite being the smallest National Forest in the nation at 11,000 acres, the Tuskegee is a place rich in history, beauty, and recreational opportunities. As a recreational resource, the Tuskegee offers hunting and fishing, a fine horse trail, wildlife viewing, and the Bartram Trail. The Bartram Trail was Alabama's first National Recreation Trail and is considered one of the best mountain biking trails in the South.

For more than a decade, WildLaw's attorneys have worked to protect the environmental and recreational values of the Tuskegee and to encourage better management of the forest by the U.S. Forest Service. Several legal actions filed by WildLaw and Wild Alabama forced an end to bad logging practices in the Tuskegee. Now, the Forest Service is engaged in a scientifically-sound restoration program in the Tuskegee, protecting hardwoods and restoring Longleaf Pine.

Despite many of the wonderful qualities of the Tuskegee, the Forest is suffering. Years of bad logging practices have left Loblolly Pine plantations that are sterile areas that need restoration to Longleaf Pine. Encroaching development and modification of private lands around the forest adversely impact its beauty and environmental values. Illegal dumps along little-used dirt roads occur near and in the forest and pollute the public streams that flow through the forest.

The Tuskegee National Forest needs friends, people who will work with the Forest Service to develop a strong sense of community pride in this unique place and make it a true showcase. WildLaw and Friends of Tuskegee National Forest are working to showcase the Tuskegee Forest to bring eco-tourism and new dollars to the local economy. This effort could be a model for local community involvement in the management of a National Forest.

Ray Vaughan, WildLaw's Executive Director, has been selected to be the environmental/quality of life delegate on the I-85 Corridor Initiative's Executive Council. The I-85 Corridor Initiative is an effort to bring a higher quality of life to the rural, often poor section of Alabama through which Interstate 85 runs. The Executive Council is the institutional body tasked with implementing a long-term strategy to build economic, environmental, and social prosperity in the region. This representative body is designed to bring to reality plans for competitive industries and higher standards of living in the region.

As part of that program, Ray is also working on plans to develop Exit 38 of I-85 into an exemplary gateway to Tuskegee, the University, the National Forest, and the National Park Service programs at the Tuskegee Airmen museum and Moton Field. In an area overlooked by progress in the past, the plan is to develop a model for an interstate exit that capitalizes on and enhances the area's unique qualities instead of building just another cookie-cutter exit full of the same old hotels and fast food places.

In November, WildLaw hosted the fourth meeting of the Southern Forests Network. Held at the Kellogg Conference Center at Tuskegee University, the meeting was a success. During the past year, the SFN has become a vibrant community of individuals and organizations that bring diverse perspectives, resources, and expertise to the sustainable forestry movement. The Network has become a valuable forum for sharing ideas and information while increasing the recognition and support of sustainable forestry in the South.

The SFN has now grown to include more than 80 participants from local forest industry, forest conservation organizations, land management agencies, and educational and research institutions. Due to the work of SFN, the sense of isolation that many experienced in the past is now being replaced by an almost limitless potential for collaboration and widespread progress. By working together, the SFN is strengthening each of our efforts and ensuring a positive future for our forests, communities, and local forest industry.

On December 3, 2003, President Bush signed into law HR 1904, the "Healthy" Forests Restoration Act of 2003. This new law limits public participation in new logging projects on 20,250,000 acres of National Forests and BLM lands. It also guts several key features of existing law, such as the requirement under the National Environmental Policy Act to consider alternatives to the action. WildLaw responded to this unprecedented attack on our public forests and our rights as citizens. WildLaw attorneys prepared a Legal Action Plan white paper (available on our web site in Word format) on the requirements and possible legal strategies for protecting public lands under this new law. While HR 1904 eliminates or weakens many of the legal protections public forests once enjoyed, this statute is not completely without standards and does not remove all tools available to the public to ensure proper management of public lands.

Fighting this abuse of our rights and this attack on our public lands will take much more time, legal efforts and, yes, money than we have available. WildLaw and our client organizations are committed to doing everything possible to protect public forests and ensure good management despite the giveaways to special interests in HR 1904. We will work to enforce existing law fully and to get this unnecessary and undemocratic piece of legislation repealed. Despite possibly the worst setback dealing with public lands laws in the history of the country being handed to us by the radical republicans temporarily in control of the nation, WildLaw will never quit fighting for what is right. This land belongs to us, not the special interests who buy politicians.

WildLaw is working with many other groups to provide extensive legal challenges to projects under HR 1904 in 2004. We also launched a page on our web site to track projects under HR 1904 and to highlight what "healthy" forests really means to the Administration.

U.S. District Court Judge Karon Bowdre in Birmingham, Alabama issued an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' permit for a dam on the Duck River in Cullman County, Alabama. One of Alabama's last free-flowing rivers, the Duck feeds into the Mulberry Fork of the Black Warrior River, creating the state's finest white water kayaking area, an area used and celebrated by Olympic gold medalists.

Judge Bowdre found that the Corps had failed to take the "hard look" at foreseeable environmental impacts required by the National Environmental Policy Act. In a very well-written and thorough opinion, Judge Bowdre looked beyond the reams of material the Corps had thrown into the administrative record to make it look like they had done their job to see that all that "work" rested upon totally unsupported assumptions and speculation. Once the Judge waded through the bureaucratic mire, she saw that the agency had fundamentally failed to look at the most basic and foreseeable impacts from the proposed dam. She vacated the permit and remanded the matter to the Corps to have them decide whether to prepare a full environmental impact statement (EIS) on the dam proposal.

This case was brought by the American Canoe Association, Alabama Rivers Alliance, Friends of the Mulberry Fork and Wild Alabama. Counsel were Ray Vaughan of WildLaw and David Bookbinder, now of the Sierra Club in DC. Special thanks go out to David who did most of the brief writing and all the oral arguments before the Court.