The WildLaw Letter

A Bi-monthly Report for Members & Friends May 1998

WildLaw is pleased to announce that it is hiring two new attorneys and a summer law clerk. Thanks to the very generous donations of several individuals, WildLaw is growing from one attorney to three in a very short period of time.

Leigh Haynie will be joining us on August 1. A 1997 graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law, Leigh clerked for Judge Glenn Thompson for a year. Her duties will be primarily to work on National Forest protection cases throughout the Appalachian states as part of WildLaw's participation in Appalachian Voices' Public Lands Defense Campaign. Leigh grew up near the Bankhead National Forest and has spent many years hiking and canoeing there.

We are still interviewing for the other new attorney position and hope to have someone working early this summer. This position will be for work in a wide variety of areas, including water and air pollution, endangered species, property rights and more urban environmental issues.

Our summer law clerk this year will be Walter Daniels from the University of Alabama School of Law. Walter is President of the Environmental Law Society there.

These new hires are for one reason: WildLaw's ever growing commitment to provide legal representation to as many grassroots and environmental organizations on as many cases as is humanly possible throughout the Southeast, and even beyond.

On behalf of the Shenandoah Ecosystems Defense Group, Heartwood and Preserve Appalachian Wilderness, WildLaw filed a lawsuit in federal court in Atlanta over three timber sales in the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. The Wilderness Society is also a supporter of this case and plans to join as a plaintiff within a few weeks.

The three sales cover 530 acres of logging in two roadless areas and next to two designated wilderness areas. The sales also impact the scenic views from the Appalachian Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as directly impact a number of hiking and horse trails in these popular recreational areas. The Wilson Mountain sale and Terrapin Mountain sale both involve de facto roadless areas that the Forest Service has refused to protect in their roadless inventory for the Jefferson. The Arney Groups sale involves cuts immediately next to both the Thunder Ridge Wilderness and the James River Face Wilderness, two key wildlands on the Appalachian Trail.

Although the Wilson Mountain and Terrapin Mountain sales have not yet been sold to loggers, the Arney Groups sale had been, and parts of it are currently being logged. Luckily, the sale areas next to the Thunder Ridge and James River Face Wilderness areas had not been logged yet. After we filed of the case, the Forest Service agreed not to allow any more areas of the Arney Groups sale to be logged for at least 14 days. The Forest Service later agreed not to allow any more areas to be cut until May 18 for the unit next to the Thunder Ridge Wilderness and July 1 for units next to the James River Face Wilderness.

On March 30, 1998, WildLaw filed with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service a petition to list the Junaluska Salamander (Eurycea junaluska) as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. Filed on behalf of Appalachian Voices and the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, the petition seeks protection for an animal one expert called "perhaps the rarest salamander in North America."

Only seven existing populations are known in southwest North Carolina and southeast Tennessee, most of them falling within three streams in Graham County, North Carolina. Even within those populations, adult individuals are extremely rare. In 10 years of fieldwork, Dr. David Sever, who described the species, has collected only 50 adults; Dr. Sever supports this petition.

Field biologist Travis Ryan of the Savannah River Ecological Laboratory and another supporter of the petition has been working with the salamander since 1993. "It is my opinion that the Junaluska salamander is a very rare animal, and one in a precarious position," he wrote in a letter to the Fish & Wildlife Service.

Despite the Junaluska's fragile status, the U.S. Forest Service in the Nantahala National Forest is on the verge of beginning a massive salvage timber sale on Snowbird Creek (see next story), where a new population of Junaluska was found in 1995. A study of Junaluska salamanders commissioned by the Forest Service concluded that "the population of E. junaluska at Snowbird Creek is judged to be in a precarious position." The biologists recommended that the areas that surround Snowbird Creek should be placed in a special management category and protected from land-use management plans that may further disturb it.

Dr. Harvard Ayers, chairman of Appalachian Voices' board, said the Forest Service sale is a bigger threat to the Junaluska salamander than the agency will admit. "They're taking a very cavalier attitude. If they were responsible, they would have been monitoring this salamander's population ever since they found it, like their consultants recommended. Instead, they want to build roads, skid logs, and drive machines across steep slopes just upstream from its habitat. It's totally inexcusable."

On behalf of Appalachian Voices, WildLaw has filed an administrative appeal of the Independence Day Storm Salvage timber sale on Snowbird Creek in the Nantahala National Forest. Involving perhaps 10-15 acres of damaged timber, the sale plans to clearcut and thin 178 acres, most of which is perfectly healthy, undamaged trees on very steep slopes. The excuse of "salvage" is being used to keep this 1.2 million board foot sale out of the Cheoah District's allowable sale quantity.

The appeal challenges the timber sale on a dozen grounds, including the failure to use site-specific information, the failure to consider cumulative impacts, the failure to use available data on the rare Junaluska Salamander, the failure to consider any alternatives other than the proposal itself, and the false pretense of minor timber damage being used for a large green tree cut. This sale will directly impact one of the nation's finest trout streams, Snowbird Creek, which is one of the last remaining habitats of the Junaluska Salamander and is a proposed wild and scenic river.

WildLaw is helping the Citizens for Holly Springs challenge massive logging plans for the Holly Springs National Forest in northern Mississippi. In the DeSoto National Forest in the southern end of the state, WildLaw and Wild South are going after several timber sales that will impact the beautiful Black Creek National Scenic River and that would relocate portions of the Black Creek National Recreational Trail. In the Homochitto National Forest in the southwest part of the state, WildLaw is fighting an 8,139-acre timber sale prepared without any site-specific or cumulative impacts analysis.

The National Forests in Mississippi have traditionally been known as the cash cow for the entire Southern Region of the Forest Service, as hundreds of millions of board feet of timber were slashed out of them every year without opposition from those who want natural forests. Thanks to help from the regional group Heartwood, local citizens, such as those at Holly Springs, are organizing and fighting for the last wild places of this too often overlooked area. WildLaw is proud to help these groups fight for Mississippi's forests.

Working with Heartwood and its local grassroots allies, WildLaw helped orchestrate one of the largest sets of requests for documents ever under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). We filed FOIA requests for inventorying and monitoring data to 19 National Forest supervisors (covering 25 forests) throughout the eastern United States. Except for the National Forests in Alabama, all four of which responded appropriately with the materials requested, all the other forest supervisors collaborated in an effort to dodge these requests. Eighteen of our FOIA requests were answered by the same form letter that said they could not tell what we wanted.

Strange how the Alabama forests had no trouble figuring out what we wanted and providing it to us at no charge. Obviously, these 18 supervisors got together and conspired to commit what appears to be the largest FOIA violation ever in the history of the Forest Service.

On behalf of Heartwood, WildLaw appealed these 18 denials to the Chief of the Forest Service. Unfortunately, Chief Mike Dombeck sided with these 18 Supervisors and refused to hear our appeal, claiming that no denial of access to documents had ever occurred. Basically, he reasoned that since these supervisors never actually said they were "denying" our requests, the fact that they refused to turn over any documents was irrelevant. Of course, under FOIA, failure to provide the requested documents within 20 working days is automatically a denial. His decision to condone these truly gross violations of our premier open documents law is yet another sign that the Clinton Administration does not practice what they preach. We are already preparing to sue over this conspiracy.

The Forest Service has once again proposed to clearcut along the slopes of Rebecca Mountain, the most scenic and remote mountain ridge in the Talladega Ranger District of the Talladega National Forest. WildLaw and the Alabama Wilderness Alliance defeated this timber sale more than a year ago when the Forest Service failed to give public notice on more than 100 acres of cuts in the final proposal. Coming back this time with even more cuts proposed, the Forest Service has totally failed to address any of the concerns we raised the first time, and they propose to destroy a natural hardwood forest to plant a pine plantation.

WildLaw has already prepared the appeal on this proposal and will be ready to challenge it again as soon as the decision becomes final.

On behalf of Wild Alabama, WildLaw filed a notice of intent to file suit against the Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA) under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The notice alleged that the construction activities at the Prattville Robert Trent Jones golf course caused numerous unpermitted discharges of silt and sediment into Cooter's Pond. Under the CWA, one must give the alleged violator 60 days notice prior to filing suit in order to give the alleged violator a chance to correct the illegal discharges on its own.

After the Corps of Engineer's secretive lease of the publicly-owned Cooter's Pond Park on the Alabama River to the RSA for use in a planned Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail course, Wild Alabama and WildLaw have been monitoring the construction activities there. Since construction began in November 1997, we have documented numerous violations of the CWA due to unpermitted discharges of silt and sediment from the cleared areas into the Pond. In March, we documented numerous violations of law resulting from poorly constructed and ineffective silt fences that were allowing silt to discharge into the Pond despite the fact that no rain had occurred in the area for a week beforehand.

Cooter's Pond was the last, best publicly-owned, old growth, bottomland hardwood forest in central Alabama. America has lost more than 80% of its bottomland hardwood forests, which serve as valuable resources providing us with wildlife, flood control, improved water quality, pollution removal, fisheries, scenic beauty and a host of other services. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, Cooter's Pond in its natural condition had values "of national significance." The park had trees 200 years old and older and up to five feet in diameter; it was unequaled habitat for turkey and migratory song birds. After having virtually no public input on this project, the Army Corps decided to give Cooter's Pond away to be destroyed.

Despite claims of the RSA and the Corps that construction of this golf course would have no adverse environmental impacts, the facts are that an old growth forest was destroyed and the construction activities were causing serious pollution problems in the public waters of Cooter's Pond. The public was fleeced out of a $15 million piece of spectacular property and now the destruction of that property is degrading our water. This intent to file suit was sent in order to stop this damage to the public trust.

In response to our notice of intent to file suit, the RSA and its contractor spent tens-of-thousands of dollars to put into place what is now one of the finest sediment control systems we have ever seen. They also cleaned up some of the sediment that had washed into the forest areas that had not been cut down for the fairways. As fine as the new system is, it is what they should have erected in the first place. Legally, this brings them into compliance with the CWA, and we are now barred from suing them over the five months of illegal discharges. Nonetheless, we succeeded in making them clean up and got good media coverage on what really happens when a public wild land is converted to private industrial recreational use.

On behalf of the Armuchee Alliance, WildLaw has filed an appeal of the Maddox Gap timber sale on the Armuchee Ranger District of the Chattahoochee National Forest in northwest Georgia. This appeal challenges what appears to be a "done deal" decision that totally failed to consider cumulative impacts, water quality, sensitive species or recreational use. The Chickamauga Trail, the only trail in the district reserved for hiking, will actually be used as a skid trail for removing the logs. The Armuchee is a beautiful ridge and valley area that is a key connection for the planned extension of the Pinhoti Trail in Alabama to the Appalachian Trail.

WildLaw and Appalachian Voices presented a weekend workshop in early April on challenging, appealing and suing over bad Forest Service timber sales and other actions. Held in Walland, Tennessee, near the Great Smokies, the workshop was attended by representatives from forest watch groups from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Together, this collection of activists represented many years of experience in fighting Forest Service mismanagement, and the collective sharing of ideas, tactics and strategies helped build an even stronger region-wide force to defend our forests.

In the near future, WildLaw's web site will be extensively expanded to provide a clearinghouse for comments, appeals and litigation materials gathered from the work of this network of activists so as to provide the entire nation access to legal documents and arguments that have produced real results in protecting public wild lands. WildLaw's web site already has a primer on challenging National Forest projects, and its scope will soon be increased.

For those who cannot wait for much of the information that will be on the web site, WildLaw has produced a hypertext CD-ROM that works in any web browser that includes most of the materials that will be on the web site in the future. If your group would like a copy of the CD-ROM, just send $10 to cover costs and shipping to WildLaw at the address below.

www.wildlaw.org