The WildLaw Letter

For Members and Friends November 2001

As everyone knows, the world and our country are different places now. Everyone has said something about the recent tragedies and events in the world, and I will also, because unless we all have a say in these things, someone else will make the future for us. It is clear now, more than two months after September 11, that we are under attack from many directions and from many enemies. Of course we must fight those terrorists who kill innocent people, but this new war is also clearly being used as an opportunistic gambit by those who profit from environmental destruction and from subjugating people. As stated so well by Bill Moyers,

"Just one day after the attack, one day into the maelstrom of horror, loss, and grief, Republican senators called for prompt consideration of the President's proposal to subsidize the country's largest and richest energy companies. While America was mourning they were marauding. One congressman even suggested that eco-terrorists might be behind the attacks. And with that smear he and his kind went on the offensive in Congress, attempting to attach to a defense bill massive subsidies for the oil, coal, gas and nuclear companies. To a defense bill! What a shameless insult to patriotism! What a slander on the sacrifice of our armed forces! To pile corporate welfare totaling billions of dollars onto a defense bill in an emergency like this is repugnant to the nostrils and a scandal against democracy! But this is their game. They are counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They're counting on you to stand at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket."

We hear that we must give up some of our freedoms in order to obtain once more that precious false sense of security we had on Sept. 10. I disagree. We are told that environmental protection work must be less confrontational against the Bush Administration. I disagree. Bush is planning on logging in roadless areas in Utah; WildLaw sued to stop him. Bush is rewriting Forest Service regulations so that they can log at will without ever doing any environmental analysis beforehand; we are taking legal action against it. Bush is planning on turning public lands in Alabama into "pay to play" areas where only those who can afford a ticket will be allowed to go there; we plan to sue to stop it. Bush is refusing to protect rare species throughout the South; we sued to stop him. The list goes on and on.

Sure, there is a time and a place for cooperative efforts instead of confrontation, and WildLaw excels at working with others to make things better (just see our work to help private landowners manage and protect their land at www.southernsustainableforests.org). But there is also a time and place for standing up to evil and saying "NO!" Nothing is more patriotic and more American than fighting for our rights and our land, especially if the enemy is our own government and the corporate interests that control it. As a truly great president, Teddy Roosevelt, once said, "Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of ensuring the safety and continuance of the nation."

Edward Abbey said that the best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. We cannot protect freedom by giving it up. You make a muscle stronger by exercising it, not by cutting part of it off. The same goes for our rights under the Constitution and the laws of this nation; we must exercise them now more than ever if we are to defend them. Allowing them to be lost through fear or through blind conformity masquerading as patriotism is much worse than losing them through use. In this high-tech, Machiavellian world being thrust upon us, we may lose many of our rights and our environment anyway, but it is far better to lose standing up than to lose automatically by cowardly capitulation.

WildLaw and our staff remain committed to defending the wild places and things that cannot fight for themselves. We will defend our Constitution and laws. In a world at war, there are many casualties lined up, and those things that cannot speak for themselves stand near the front of the line. Our freedoms stand there as well. Defending America should not mean destroying our natural environment. Fighting terrorism should not mean sacrificing our natural resources and handing them over to corporate profiteers. Enhancing security should not mean giving up our freedoms. Without a clean and natural environment that still has wild places, there can be no security and no freedom. Without our freedoms, there can be no America worth fighting for.

Again, as Edward Abbey said, "God bless America. Let's save some of it."

The U.S. Forest Service has proposed a massive land exchange with the State of Florida Although this land swap would affect more than 300,000 acres of land, the Forest Service had intended to conduct this exchange with no environmental analysis. The Forest Service would have "categorically excluded" this exchange from NEPA documentation had it not been for the insistence of WildLaw on behalf of our client, Wild South. Instead, the Forest Service will now analyze the impacts of this proposed exchange with a full Environmental Impact Statement.

The federal lands involved, which would go to the state of Florida, consist of approximately 4,646 acres of National Forest land and 296,300 acres of mineral interests. In exchange, the Forest Service would receive approximately 33,914 acres, primarily in the Pinhook Swamp area north of the Osceola National Forest.

On the surface, a government-to-government land exchange may not appear to be too objectionable. However, included in the land the Forest Service is proposing to give away is the Tates Hell Tract on the southern boundary of the Apalachicola National Forest. Surveys have revealed the presence of at least two endangered plant species on this tract. If the land containing these federally protected plant species were released from federal ownership, the State of Florida would have no legal duty to preserve them. Furthermore, the New River, which the Forest Service itself has proposed to be as a wild and scenic river, flows through the middle of Tates Hell. Although the Forest Service is supposed to be managing the New River as though it has already been designated as a Wild & Scenic River, the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act prohibits the government from disposing lands adjacent to Wild & Scenic Rivers.

The Forest Service is seeking to acquire the 33,700-acre Pinhook Swamp Tract in order to create a large federally owned wildlife corridor, connecting the 200,000-acre Osceola National Forest to the 391,400-acre Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. While this landscape connection may be important for the Florida black bear and the potential reintroduction of the Florida panther to the area, no one can say whether this exchange would benefit the public interest without looking at its environmental impacts. Furthermore, if the Forest Service would remove the Tates Hell Tract from the exchange and put significant restrictions on the other mineral rights it proposes to trade, this land exchange would be much less objectionable. The Draft EIS for this land exchange is not due to be published until early 2002, but WildLaw will continue to keep a watchful eye on this proposal.

Forest Road 600 runs along the highest ridge of the Talladega Mountains, the southern end of the Appalachians, and connects the existing Cheaha Wilderness with three other areas proposed as wilderness by the Alabama Wilderness Alliance in the wildlands proposal in Wild Earth magazine. Closing this road and making it into a trail will mean that an additional 37,200 acres (a lot in Alabama) will become essentially roadless and will enable the creation of a string of wilderness areas that will then be linked together by the trail. Making this old road a horse and hiking trail would create a singularly unique recreational resource in Alabama. Making it a "scenic" highway will destroy the last wild mountain range in the state.

Sherman Cliffs on Rebecca Mountain provide the best scenic views in Alabama, mainly because the views and the solitude are not spoiled by the sights and sounds of industrial society and a road filled with cars and trucks. To feel that people have to be able to drive everywhere in order to enjoy nature is an idea that enslaves us to our machines.

The areas this road goes through contain some of the last old growth in Alabama's National Forests. These old forests (predominantly chestnut oak, black oak and white oak) are quite beautiful, and the best scenic views from cliffs in Alabama are here. The recreational potential for these areas is great but is currently unheralded and unused. Compared to much of Alabama's National Forests, very little logging has occurred recently in these areas and along this road. The streams coming from these mountains contain a number of unique snail and mussel species, some of which are found only in Alabama and in these river drainages. Several of these species are already listed under the ESA and several more are proposed.

Currently, the National Forests in Alabama are revising their Land Resources Management Plan (LRMP), and a strong push to close this road and propose these areas as wilderness must be made now or never again for at least 20 years. These areas along FS600 were part of the AWA's overall proposal to protect and restore Alabama wildlands, which was reviewed and approved by Dr. Reed Noss and Dr. Michael Soulé.

The current condition of FS600 is that it is a one-lane track with many rough, virtually washed-out places that require a high ground clearance vehicle. With each year, the road continues to degrade. The reason the Forest Service is not maintaining the road is because they want to use the LRMP revision to get the money to pave it and make it part of their Talladega Scenic Drive, a "scenic" superhighway that terminates at the northern end of these areas, where they connect with the Cheaha Wilderness. We are at a crucial crossroads. If we can get enough support to close the road, make it a trail and get protection for these areas, the physical work of doing so will be little more than putting up a few gates and signs. If we cannot do this, then the Forest Service and the State of Alabama will eventually find the money to turn the road into a very destructive highway. The old growth, the solitude and the opportunity for protecting these areas will then be lost.

The Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) plans to extend the 27-mile Talladega Scenic Drive in the Talladega National Forest. Doing so in the wrong place will destroy tens-of-thousands of acres of wild mountain lands and split a proposed wilderness area. The current scenic drive runs along the spine of the Talladega Mountains (Alabama's highest, up to 2,407 feet) from near Interstate 20 to Adams Gap, just south of Cheaha State Park. For several miles, it runs right next to the Cheaha Wilderness area. At Adams Gap, the wide, curvy road (with its wide, mowed shoulders) ends into what is a rough, one-lane dirt road, parts of which are impassable to cars. Anyone who has ever hiked in the Cheaha Wilderness can tell you how having this superhighway right next to the wilderness destroys much of the wilderness experience. The road, its wide swath of cleared space, and the cars and trucks on it can be seen and heard easily from the trails and scenic overlooks in the entire western portion of the wilderness.

U.S. Senator Richard Shelby has stuck $5 million of pork money into an appropriations bill in order to begin planning, "improving" and paving this dirt road to extend the scenic drive south of Adams Gap. The plan is to extend the drive for up to 20 or more miles along the mountains' spine, paving over the last remote ridgetops. The road will despoil areas that The Wilderness Society, the Alabama Environmental Council, Wild Alabama, WildLaw and others have proposed as scenic areas and recreation areas in the new National Forests management plan, currently being revised by the USFS.

Building this road on these rocky and steep slopes will not be easy; according to the ALDOT, it will take much, much more than $5 million. This appropriation is to pay for design and initial paving of parts of the road. But once this work starts, as with all pork barrel projects, it will then be nearly impossible to stop the rest of it and the many millions more dollars that will be wasted.

Alabama has plenty of roads. We do not have enough trails, wilderness areas and other wild places where people can go to be alone and at peace with nature. To pave the route to every wild place is elitist and destroys the very wildness people want to go see. There need to be a few places left where people can actually get out of their automobiles and walk in silence and beauty.

WildLaw and Wild Alabama are prepared to sue over this road and use every legal means necessary to stop it. However, with your help, a lawsuit will not be needed. The Forest Service, us and others are proposing that any extension of the scenic drive be moved down into the valleys to the east of the mountain range, upgrading some existing paved state and county roads that are already there. Doing this will give drivers great views of the mountains, give the local communities more economic growth by enabling them to build roadside amenities that they could not build on the high, narrow ridge, and will save the wild mountain areas on the National Forest.

Write to the ALDOT's contractor that is working on this project and tell them that you want any extension of the scenic drive to drop down into the valleys east of the mountains. Tell them that you oppose any extension that would go along the spine of mountains where FS Road 600 is now. Make sure to ask to be put on their mailing list for any future notices, mailings and meetings about the scenic drive

Write to:

Ms. Janide Sidifall

Day Wilburn Associates, Inc.

1718 Peachtree St., NW - Suite 461

Atlanta, GA 30309

fax: (404) 249-7705

e-mail: jsidifall@daywilburn.com

On September 10, 2001, the WildLaw Insight was attacked by anti-environmental vandals as it was parked at the Adams Gap trailhead next to the Cheaha Wilderness in the Talladega National Forest. Ray was on a road survey with Lamar Marshall of Wild Alabama and Jay Hudson of the Alabama Chapter of the Sierra Club; they were all in Lamar's SUV going over the rough 4wd road that is proposed to be improved and paved as an extension to the Talladega Scenic Drive. As they were on the survey, vandals shot out the driver's side window of the Insight and dented its door. A large hole was also shot in the windshield of Jay's truck that was parked there too. A marble found in the Insight showed that the creeps had used a slingshot and marbles to do the damage. Nothing in the vehicles was taken or disturbed. Thus, this was not a robbery but a message. These vandals did not want us there using our public lands. A bumper sticker on Jay's truck and the very nature of the Insight itself advertised that we were environmentalists, and these goons decided to send us a message that they did not like us being there.

The District Ranger for the Talladega stated that they had previously had no incidents of this type of vandalism there before. So, for those who may go to the Talladega in the future, be aware that a new level of anti-environmental violence has surfaced there. As for the scenic drive extension, one of the proponents' big arguments for the extension is that the paving of the road will make the place safer, that more security will be available. Well, we were parked at the largest and one of the most used parking lots on the existing scenic drive, and this vandalism happened. Some security. To see the damage, go to our page on the Insight, Wildlaw Insight

As part of a regional effort to protect rare wildlife in the National Forests of the South, WildLaw and our clients the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Wild South and Wild Alabama joined with the Southern Environmental Law Center and a number of other environmental and conservation organizations to file suit against the Forest Service's gutting of requirements to survey for rare and declining wildlife prior to logging. Below is the press release for the case:

Groups Sue Forest Service to Protect South's Declining Wildlife and Plant Species

The Southern Environmental Law Center, representing a coalition of 11 environmental groups, filed a regional lawsuit in federal court today against the U.S. Forest Service for failing to monitor imperiled plants and animals in national forests in Alabama and four other southern states.

According to its own regulations, the Forest Service is supposed to identify and monitor "sensitive" species -- those that are in decline but not necessarily designated as federally threatened or endangered. The purpose is to inform the agency about the likely impacts from logging, road building and other activities to avoid further decline of the species.

The agency's Southern Region, headquartered in Atlanta, is responsible for ensuring that adequate data is maintained for the identified plants and animals--including Bachman's sparrow, Elfin woods warbler, Florida black bear, Roanoke bass, sweet white trillium and bog turtle. For years, the agency ignored the requirement and was subject to two lawsuits brought by conservation groups. In the first case, a federal appeals court judge found that the Forest Service has kept little, if any, information on many of the sensitive species, confirmed the agency's obligation to collect this data and held that its failure to do so was illegal. In a settlement in the second case, the Forest Service last year withdrew 79 timber sales across the South for which the agency failed to collect the necessary data.

Nonetheless, Forest Service officials in five states--Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana--are attempting to evade the monitoring requirement by changing their individual 15-year forest management plans. Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas amended their plans last year to weaken, and in some instances eliminate the requirement, and Florida and Louisiana similarly dropped it when they updated their plans. Despite their failure for 15 years to comply with the requirement, Forest Service officials now want total discretion in keeping track of sensitive species.

"There's simply no authority on the books that allows them to change the wildlife monitoring requirements through individual forest plans," said Blaine Phillips, SELC attorney and lead counsel on the case. "They don't like the hand they've been dealt so they are trying to change the rules."

The groups are concerned that national forest managers throughout the South will try the same tactic to avoid collecting data about sensitive species. The suit filed today in U.S. District Court, the Northern District of Georgia, in Atlanta, asks the court to overturn the Forest Service's decision to weaken the monitoring requirement. (The groups had last year filed an appeal with the Regional Forester to disapprove the Georgia, Alabama and Florida plans, but were denied.) The defendants are Regional Forester Elizabeth Estill and the U.S. Forest Service.

"Once again, the Forest Service has cut legal corners and cut the public out of the agency's decision-making process in order to cut trees. Sacrificing wildlife to subsidize more logging on our public lands shows just how out of touch the Administration is with what the vast majority of Americans want on their national forests," said Ray Vaughan, WildLaw attorney and co-counsel on the lawsuit.

"The U.S. Forest is mandated by law to protect the viability of all species on public lands. Any third grade child can understand that an agency cannot manage nor protect wildlife when they don't know where it is or what their populations are. All we are asking is that they do the right thing. They should know it is illegal to break the law," said Lamar Marshall of Wild Alabama, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

"The Forest Service and the Bush Administration continue undermining our environmental laws and protections, and we simply cannot stand by while they betray the public's trust. What's at stake is habitat for our most imperiled species in the South's national forests," said the Sierra Club's Rene Voss, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Ensuring that these sensitive plants and animals are properly monitored will avoid more time-consuming, costly and extensive measures that would likely be necessary later if they were allowed to further decline and become federally listed as threatened or endangered.

On behalf of Heartwood, WildLaw filed suit against the Forest Service and the Eastern Regional Forester, Robert Jacobs, in the District Court of Wisconsin on October 17, 2001. The lawsuit is based on the Forest Service's dismissal of Heartwood's administrative appeals for three separate projects. Instead of considering the appeals on the merits of the issues raised, the Forest Service dismissed each one for being one day past the deadline for filing appeals. The complaint alleges that Heartwood filed the appeals on the date provided by the Forest Service to Heartwood. In each appeal the Forest Service acknowledged that the date provided to Heartwood was wrong, but that Heartwood should not have relied upon the Forest Service to provide the correct filing date. The projects appealed by Heartwood are located in the Ottawa National Forest, the Hiawatha National Forest, and the Mark Twain National Forest.

WildLaw, on behalf of Northwoods Wilderness Recovery, filed an appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on October 23, 2001. The appeal is based on District Judge David McKeague's granting of the Forest Service's Motion for Summary Judgment in a lawsuit over the "Rolling Thunder" timber sale located in the Ottawa National Forest. The lawsuit concerns violations of the Land and Resource Management Plan, the National Forest Management Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Many thanks to all our contributors in 2001, especially our major donors:

- Fred Stanback

- The W. Alton Jones Foundation

- The Moriah Fund

- The Norcross Wildlife Foundation

- The Blumenthal Foundation

- The Foundation for Deep Ecology

- Patagonia

- James Redfield

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