Three lawsuits were filed against the Forest Service for failing to protect environment and cultural resources on Pine Mountain and Reyes Peak, backed by a coalition of environmental, business, and recreational groups.
Ventura County and the City of Ojai were also part of the suits filed suit in federal court in May to challenge the commercial logging and vegetation removal project in the Los Padres National Forest.
“Pine Mountain must be protected, not offered up to logging companies using loopholes that make a mockery of our bedrock environmental laws, said Los Padres ForestWatch Executive Director Jeff Kuyper.
Keep Sespe Wild Director Alasdair Coyne noted that, “These ‘sky islands’ of giant trees only survive at the rare high elevation peaks of SoCal's national forests. Threatened by climate change, they need protection, not logging."
Plus, the project area is located on ancestral lands of the Chumash and is historically and culturally important to them. It is also critical habitat for the California condor, and home to other sensitive wildlife, rare plants, old-growth conifer forests, and unique ecosystems. Recreation is also an important aspect.
Too, the area is proposed for wilderness protection under the bipartisan Central Coast Heritage Protection Act (H.R. 2199), now awaiting final approval in the Senate.
Environmental Defense Center’s Senior Attorney Maggie Hall asserted the project violated “several important environmental laws.”
The project would allow unlimited cutting and removal of live and dead trees of any age up to two feet in diameter and an undisclosed number of trees up to five feet in diameter as well as the destruction of chaparral across 755 acres.
The lawsuits – which are likely to be combined -- take aim at the Forest Service’s failure to collaborate with stakeholders which is required on a ‘categorical exclusion’, which is designed for small maintenance projects.
The project was approved last September over the objection of local elected officials, Indigenous leaders, scientists, more than 30 area businesses, 70 environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, and 15,000 members of the public.
The project is part of a spate of proposals issued during the Trump Administration when timber targets were increased, costs were lowered, and the use of categorical exclusions was encouraged. Three similar projects are proposed in the immediate region.
For more information go to:
www.protectpinemountain.org