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Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest
September 8, 2004 Press Release For
Immediate Release
Contact Vince Taylor, Ph.D. (707) 937-3001
In a decision issued on September 4,
2004, the First District California Court of Appeals affirmed the award of
legal fees to the Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest for a
suit brought against the California Department of Forestry in June 2000.
As a result of losing the appeal, CDF
will owe the Campaign about $119,000 including $15,000 in interest. This
latest fee award is in addition to the $201,000 that the state has already
paid for costs related to the Campaign's later challenge to the
environmental document for Jackson Forest.
Additional
payments by CDF are still pending for other Campaign legal actions. Altogether,
the state's payments related to its unsuccessful defense of its management
of Jackson State Forest may eventually total around $350,000.
The suit at issue in the appeal stopped
several logging plans filed in 2001 and forced CDF to prepare a new
management plan and environmental documents for Jackson State Forest. A
second lawsuit by the Campaign resulted in the court declaring the new
management plan and environmental report legally invalid in 2003. Logging
operations in Jackson State Forest have not resumed to date.
The Appeals Court rejected every
contention made by CDF in its appeal, often quite pointedly, and it
strongly affirmed the public benefits of the Campaign's legal actions.
Vince Taylor, Ph.D., Executive Director
of the Campaign, commented, "This latest court decision adds to the
extensive documentation of the malfeasance of CDF and its efforts to evade
the law in managing Jackson State Forest. It strongly affirms the need for
the management reforms contained in SB 1648, Senator Chesbro's state
forest reform bill."
In responding to CDF's contention that
the Campaign's lawsuit had not produced any significant public benefit,
the court said:
In sum, defendants are
obligated to manage the Jackson State Forest according to current
practices which achieve “maximum sustained production of high quality
forest products while giving consideration to values relating to
recreation, watershed, wildlife, range and forage, fisheries, and
aesthetic enjoyment.” (§ 4639.) Without question, this obligation is an
important right affecting the public interest.
This right was enforced by
the Campaign. Before the Campaign secured a preliminary injunction and
settlement agreement preventing them from going forward, defendants were
on the verge of harvesting timber in the Jackson State Forest under a
management plan that did not, according to defendants’ own policies,
reflect the most current views of proper forest management… At the end of
the day, the settlement reached between the Campaign and defendants
ensured that defendants would manage the forest properly by applying an
updated management plan to all currently contemplated and future timber
harvests. [p. 7]
CDF and the Board of Forestry sought to
moot the suit, after logging was enjoined, by deleting the requirement for
a "current management plan" from the policies of the Board of Forestry
governing state forests. The Court of Appeals firmly rejected this as a
viable legal maneuver and suggested that it viewed this tactic as a
ethically questionable:
We reject defendants’
argument that, because they deleted the word “current” from their policy
regarding periodic review of management plans, the Campaign did not
actually enforce an important right. Defendants seem to suggest that, in
changing the wording of this policy, they have somehow eliminated the
public’s right to have state forests operated under current forest
management principles. This argument is specious in the extreme.
Without considering the propriety of defendants’ actions in altering the
text of this policy mid-way through this controversy, it is simply
not the case that defendants may operate state forests under outdated
management plans. (Emphasis added.) … Defendants continue to
have an obligation to apply current management principles to their
operation of state forests. This important obligation was enforced in the
Campaign’s action. [p. 7]
The Court firmly
rejected CDF's contention made in its briefs but also in many public
statements that current law requires it to manage Jackson Forest for
maximum timber production and that nothing can legally interfere with this
obligation:
We are disturbed by
defendants’ failure to acknowledge that, in managing the state forests,
they must take into account uses of these forests for purposes other than
timber harvesting. For example, defendants describe the Legislature as
intending that the “State Forests be (primarily) utilized for “. . .
timber production for research and demonstration purposes.” … At no point
in their opening brief, do defendants even mention section 4639,
although this section makes clear that defendants must accomplish the
“maximum sustained production of high quality forest products while giving
consideration to values relating to recreation, watershed, wildlife, range
and forage, fisheries, and aesthetic enjoyment.” (§ 4639) Defendants refer
to section 4639 only once in their reply brief and, remarkably, provide
this court with a quote from it that excludes the language “while giving
consideration to values relating to recreation, watershed, wildlife, range
and forage, fisheries, and aesthetic enjoyment.” In so doing, defendants
seem to suggest that their obligation to manage the state forests is
primarily an obligation to bring about the maximum timber harvest and that
any delay or hindrance to this goal defeats the legislature's purpose in
establishing the state forest system. This suggestion, which we reject,
can only be made by ignoring the full extent of defendants’ management
obligation. (Emphases added.) [Footnote 3, p. 6]
Finally, the Court rejected CDF's
oft-heard contention that the Campaign was responsible for causing it
severe financial harm:
In
making this argument below, defendants put forward evidence in the form of
declarations by its employees to the effect because of its agreement to
temporarily discontinue harvesting timber in the Jackson State Forest,
defendants borrowed $3 million from the state’s General Fund, had a $9
million shortfall in budget and were forced to cut back on a variety of
programs and personnel.
The
most basic problem with defendants’ argument is that it suffers from a
myopic view of what caused these budgetary shortfalls. The Campaign’s
effort to stop defendants from harvesting timber without regard to their
management obligations did not “cost” defendants these monies. Rather,
defendants’ inability to harvest timber in the Jackson State Forest was a
result of their failure to manage the forest in accordance with currently
mandated management practices. (Emphasis added.) [p. 11]
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