The WildLaw Letter

For Members and Friends January 2000

1999 was another great year for WildLaw and the work we do. We grew rapidly from one office with three staff to three offices with seven people now working to protect our environment and communities. Our work resulted in a number of major legal victories for wild places. Here are just a few of the significant wins of 1999: We shut down the strip mine land exchange program in the Bankhead National Forest, which resulted in more than 25,000 acres being put under a moratorium preventing land exchanges for several years until the Forest Service completes its management plan revision.

We stopped a number of bad logging projects on the National Forests of the South and up North, and our efforts stopped more than 20,000 acres of illegal or scientifically unsound logging proposals in 1999. Our work on literally hundreds of Forest Service proposals has led to a new era where many ranger districts will contact WildLaw before even proposing logging or other activities. We are allowed to review their plans and make suggested changes before things get contentious. And many of these rangers now listen to our suggestions, as several recent proposals have dropped thousands of acres of logging in response to our calls to stay out of roadless areas, not to cut old growth or trees getting close to old growth age, and not to cut natural, native species, such as hardwoods. Indeed, several forests have totally dropped all plans to cut hardwoods and have pledged to us not to propose logging of hardwoods in the future. The result has been that these districts now only propose logging that will remove unnatural pine plantations and replant the native species, such as longleaf pine or hardwoods. Scientists who work with WildLaw have reviewed such limited restoration logging and found that it does help repair the forests, increases diversity of species in streams and is quite beneficial for rare species. Limiting logging to unnatural plantation areas and to work that restores native species protects all areas that have a natural forest and is the best management possible under current laws.

Showing that logging does not have to destroy natural forests anymore and can be limited in its application to restoration only where such work is shown to be scientifically needed is a significant step toward the day when all parts of our National Forests will be restored and then logging will no longer be needed. With limits achieved through legal work, we are that much closer to the day when we can end all commercial logging on our public lands. Still, WildLaw and our clients have much work to do, because for every ranger district that has adopted a commitment to less logging and to no logging of natural or recovering forests there are many more districts that have not. We must continue and even expand our forest watch work to other National Forests in order to bring about the maximum limits on logging possible under current laws.

We have greatly expanded our programs of work. Now, WildLaw provides the environmental community much more than legal representation. We have an active wilderness protection campaign and an educational program to teach children and adults about environmental laws. Starting in 2000, we have our own air force with a pilot on staff giving us the ability to take areal photos and videos of any area we and our clients are working on. Also, I have completed the University of Alabama's two-year LL.M. course giving me an advanced law degree in tax law, and WildLaw will be starting a new program to provide our clients tax advice and assistance and to make available to our clients' members estate planning work ranging from advice on charitable giving to complete estate planning.

Staff:

WildLaw started 1999 with three attorneys in our Montgomery office. We start 2000 with three attorneys and a new office manager there, and we now also have two staff attorneys in North Carolina and one in Minnesota.

Kellam Warren and Walter Daniels opened up our Asheville, North Carolina office in June, and they have appealed more than a dozen National Forest logging projects, winning the first one they filed. They have also worked to increase legal assistance to the environmental and community groups of North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and parts of Virginia in a number of vital areas, such as wetlands and coastal zone protection, endangered species protection, and water quality. Kellam was awarded the Rick Sutherland Fellowship Fund award from the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund. Only two such fellowships are given out nationwide.

Leigh Haynie moved from Montgomery to Minnesota to open our new North Woods Office there. Once there, Leigh won a major logging project appeal, only the second such win in that state ever (see article below). Working in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, whose National Forests are three of the five most heavily logged in the nation, she has been doing a great job giving a much needed legal boost to the great forest watch work the groups up there have been doing.

Aimee Smith and Chip Vercelli have joined WildLaw in our Montgomery office as staff attorneys, and they are giving us a major advantage in our abilities to hold major polluters accountable for their actions. Louise LaGrave has joined us as our office manager. (See next article.)

Teddi Carte-Turner left us early in the year due to her husband, who is in the military, being transferred.

Financial:

In 1999, WildLaw continued to grow financially, but more importantly, we continued to provide the most efficient and cost effective legal representation to the nonprofit community of any legal organization in any area. I can confidently and proudly say that WildLaw provides more bang for a buck than any other nonprofit legal organization in the nation. We handle more cases than all other environmental legal groups in the East combined, yet we do so on a budget that is just a few percentage points of such other groups who cover the kind of area we cover.

As for the numbers, in 1999 WildLaw had income of $334,947, and our total expenses were $259,631. Thus, we brought in $75,316 more than we spent, and that money is allocated to our work in 2000. The majority (53%) of our revenue came from the generosity of you, our individual donors and members. Grants made up 37% of our income, and the rest was from fees and expenses we received in our winning cases (9%) and interest income (1%).

Within these expenditures, approximately 10% was for administrative matters and about 2% for fund raising work. All else was used for program work.

I am proud of the work WildLaw did for you and the wild in 1999, and I am very excited about what we plan to do in 2000. You have been instrumental in making all this possible, and we pledge that we will continue to make your support and your dollars do more to help the environment. Thank you all for your support.

Ray Vaughan, Executive Director

WildLaw's family has increased by two new staff members. Charles "Chip" Vercelli has joined WildLaw as a staff attorney in our Montgomery, Alabama office. Chip has more than 13 years experience as a lawyer, mostly as a litigator in large business cases. An Eagle Scout, Chip has also handled pro bono work for nonprofit groups over the years. With his vast experience in litigation, Chip will be working on cases and projects that seek to reduce major sources of air and water pollution and that punish polluters that violate the law. Chip also is a instrument-licensed pilot, and he will give WildLaw and our clients a ready air power tool for our work.

Also joining WildLaw as office manager is Louise LaGrave. A registered nurse with lots of nonprofit organizational experience with the Sierra Club and the American Cancer Society, Louise will be streamlining our headquarters and helping administrative matters among our offices go more smoothly. Louise will also be working on membership and volunteer recruitment and organization.

WildLaw Staff Attorney Leigh Haynie has won our first appeal on the National Forests in Minnesota. Leigh appealed the Ivins logging project in Minnesota on behalf of the Superior Wilderness Action Network. This proposal would have logged 1,205 acres, 1,044 of it through clearcutting. This project considered only one alternative and totally failed to provide for protection of rare species. The Regional Forester agreed with our appeal and reversed the decision. This is only the second winning appeal ever of a National Forest logging project in Minnesota.

In late December, the Regional Forester in Atlanta ruled in favor of WildLaw's appeal for Wild South on the Yalobusha Area sale in the Holly Springs National Forest in northern Mississippi. The ruling found that the Forest Service did not adequately disclose the proposal's effects to water quality and did not adequately disclose the effects of mitigation measures regarding the use of herbicides. This proposed project involved 58 acres of even-aged management designed to perpetuate pine plantations in an area best suited for a mixed hardwood/pine forest.

Just days later, the Regional Forester again ruled in our favor in an appeal of a logging project in the Holly Springs National Forest. WildLaw appealed the Benton Tower Area Project for Wild South; that logging proposal would have cut 619 acres. The Regional Forester ruled that the Forest Service did not adequately disclose effects to water quality in its environmental assessment for the project.

Our Southern Appalachian Office has been busy. On the Oconee/Hiwassee Ranger District, in the Southern Region of the Cherokee National Forest, WildLaw is appealing three proposed timber sales. While ignoring the very popular recreational values of the area, the District has established a pattern of simultaneously proposing several sales in different areas, all in the name of improving wildlife habitat and making younger "healthy" stands of trees.

WildLaw is appealing these proposed timber sales because the Forest Service has failed to consider the environmental impacts of their destructive "management techniques." For example, the District claims that openings created by clearcuts will benefit herbaceous understory growth, and provide forage to many animals. But the District fails to mention that they are going to poison and burn all of these plants as soon as they come up, so there will be no competition with the emerging marketable timber.

WildLaw has also appealed three sales on the Northern District of the Cherokee. WildLaw appealed the Compartment 379 timber sale which proposes to clearcut 131 acres of middle-aged forest that will be used chiefly as pulpwood. The Rich Mountain timber sale EA also lacks adequate consideration of impacts to recreation. This sale also violates the Clean Water Act because the Broad Shoal Creek is impaired by sediment, and the Rich Mountain timber sale will cause additional sediment loading in it. WildLaw also filed an appeal challenging the proposed commercial timber sale on compartments 342, 343, 344 & 345 on the Nolichucky/Unaka Ranger District. This sale proposes to commercially log 179 acres to create 179 additional acres of early successional habitat. The EA is invalid because the botanical surveys were inadequate; they were performed by an unqualified person and they were not conducted at appropriate times of the year. Compartment 342 is located within the Strawberry Mountain Tennessee Mountain Treasure area, an area which local environmental groups have been seeking to protect as a very important corridor between Virginia and the Smokies.

WildLaw filed an appeal challenging the Forest Service's proposal to commercially log 123 acres in the New Castle Ranger District of the Jefferson National Forest on the higher slopes of both sides of Little Mountain in Monroe County, West Virginia and Craig County, Virginia. The Forest Service violated NEPA when the District Ranger unlawfully issued a revised EA, but then failed to provide the public with an opportunity to comment on this new information. The close proximity of two endangered species and the ongoing debate over the probable designation of the nearby Potts Valley and Peters Mountain area as a National Scenic Area justify a conservative approach to management in this area of public land. WildLaw also appealed the Ramsey Gap timber sale on the Deerfield Ranger District of the Jefferson National Forest. On behalf of Heartwood, Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, and Wild South, WildLaw appealed the Thunderstruck Timber Sale in the Clinch Ranger District, Jefferson National Forest. WildLaw's appeal challenges the Forest Service's stated "purpose and need" for the timber sale, which calls for a 197 acre shelterwood cut using helicopters. The purpose, according to the District, is to benefit the rare Cerulean Warbler, while helping the Forest "better understand its habitat needs." However, the Forest Service admits that the sale could have adverse impacts on the Cerulean Warbler.

Our appeal over the new, weak regulations on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) in Alabama has been settled. The animal factory industry and the Alabama Dept. of Environmental Management (ADEM) agreed to convene a new working group to examine the industry and recommend newer and stronger regulations. The first working group that developed the current regulations was made up entirely of industry and ADEM people who met in secret, and it included no involvement from the environmental community, the press or the public until after the weak regulations were already a done deal. This new working group will be open to the environmental community, the media and the public, and the industry has already agreed to work on stronger regulations for stream-side set-backs, groundwater monitoring and odor control. All other issues involving CAFOs are free to be raised by the environmental community and the public. This working group will also meet in the open. The first meeting of the new working group was Dec. 17, 1999.

Timber Harvesting magazine, a major national industry publication, wrote comments on WildLaw's educational essay program in which we are asking school children to write essays on the Endangered Species Act. The magazine claimed that WildLaw "has been harassing national forest managers in the South." The article then encouraged students to write anti-ESA essays for submission, making a vague allusion that the ESA has hurt "forestry-dependent" families. Perhaps some of the kids from those forestry families could write about the real theat to forestry jobs: how corporate greed and industrial mechanization have put lots of people out of work.

WildLaw Executive Director Ray Vaughan was elected co-Chair of the National Forest Protection Alliance's board of directors. Alison Cochran, Executive Director of Heartwood and a WildLaw board member, was elected as the other co-Chair. The NFPA is the national coalition of more than 80 groups working on permanent protection of the National Forests. This is a great honor and is recognition of WildLaw's hard work to protect National Forests. WildLaw is doing its part in the national campaign to save all our public lands, and your support makes it all possible.

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Montgomery, Alabama 36104