Order to Halt Sequoia National Monument Logging May Be Appealed
From a Times Staff Writer
The Bush administration is considering an appeal of a court order that has halted logging in Giant Sequoia National Monument, an official said today.
A federal judge banned more timber cutting in the monument after environmentalists and California state officials sued, claiming that 300-year-old trees were threatened.
U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that the U.S. Forest Service failed to consider new evidence that cutting 31,000 trees would threaten the extinction of the pacific fisher, a mink-like animal native to the Sierra Nevada.
As few as 100 of the animals may remain in the southern mountains, one of only two habitats remaining to the fisher, according to court documents. The other area is near the border between California and Oregon.
Environmentalists say that the population of fishers, which inhabit old-growth forests, were decimated by logging and trapping....
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-091305sequoia_lat,0,3043397.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews