On June 2nd, Colorado Wild and WildEarth Guardians filed suit challenging backcountry logging that threatens water and wildlife while consensus-driven projects to restore healthy forests and protect communities from fire are ignored.

CW filed a lawsuit today challenging a massive logging project on National Forest lands in the Rio Grande Basin. Colorado Wild and WildEarth Guardians claim that a change of course is needed from the Obama Administration to protect Colorado’s forests that are dangerously stressed by climate change, drought, and insect epidemics. Maintaining and restoring forests to a healthy and resilient state must be the new mantra of the Forest Service, which is vested with the management of more than 10 million acres of forests in Colorado, nearly half the state’s forestlands.

The Handkerchief Mesa timber sale is near Wolf Creek Pass in Southern Colorado. Miles from any community or infrastructure, the forest is still recovering from vast clearcuts and over-logging in the latter half of the 20th century. As if operating in the last century, the Forest Service approved an additional 3,400 acres of logging last year in the headwaters of the Rio Grande. With legal representation provided by the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Colorado Wild and WildEarth Guardians filed suit challenging the logging project. The lawsuit specifically questions the government’s decision to approve additional logging in areas where past logging impacts already exceed legal standards for soil health, and where forest regeneration is impaired by the ongoing spruce budworm outbreak.

More Information:

• Read the full press release here.
• A project map is available here.
• The legal complaint is available here.