Oregon Wild v. U.S. Forest Service

Oregon Wild filed a lawsuit in federal court in Oregon challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s Grasshopper Restoration Project in Mt. Hood National Forest. The complaint alleged that the project would allow commercial logging in mature, moist mixed-conifer forest that would “degrade suitable and critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, emit the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and eliminate current and future carbon storage.” The plaintiff asserted that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a hard look at the project’s environmental impacts and failing to prepare an environmental impact statement. Among other things, the complaint alleged that substantial scientific dispute existed regarding the project’s effects on carbon storage and emissions and climate change adaptation. Oregon Wild alleged that the Forest Service “failed to utilize available tools and information to take a site-specific hard look at the impacts of the Grasshopper Project on carbon storage and emissions, including the social cost of carbon, and further failed to update its analysis and consideration of alternatives in light of Executive Order 14072, which states the current presidential administration’s policy to conserve mature and old-growth forests on federal lands, in part for their ability to absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere.” The complaint also asserted that the Forest Service relied on an outdated biological opinion to fulfill its Endangered Species Act obligations.