Court rejects woodpecker habitat appeal

RENO - Rejecting conservationists' bid to defend habitat for a rare woodpecker at Lake Tahoe, a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Forest Service is not required to protect animals not covered by the Endangered Species Act.

The decision from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will allow logging in an area of burned forest, angering environmentalists who say it overturns decades of policy.

The judges upheld a District Court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit against the Forest Service brought by the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity challenging the logging.

The appellate court found the Forest Service had the authority to conclude the blackbacked woodpecker would not be threatened by a project intended to ease fire threats at the site of the 2007 Angora Fire, which burned 250 homes near South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Environmentalists said the ruling grants the federal agency a troubling amount of discretion in interpreting its own regulations and undermines wildlife protections in place under the National Forest Management Act since 1982.

"The protection the Reagan administration put in place to prevent fish and wildlife from being driven to extinction by commercial logging is no longer there," said Chad Hanson, executive director of the John Muir Project, an affiliate of the Earth Island Institute.

"The Obama administration just ripped a big hole in the bottom of the safety net. There's no protection anymore for any wildlife species on national forests unless it is protected under the Endangered Species Act."

The state of California and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service both are considering petitions for listing the woodpecker, which the Forest Service designated in 2007 as an indicator species for the health of all fish and wildlife dependent on post-fire habitat in the Sierra Nevada.

Tied up in court since 2010, the bulk of the logging over about 1,500 acres of national forest had been completed before the case made its way to the 9th Circuit earlier this year.

The court found the "viability rule" was not specifically incorporated into the current plan for the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit.