A federal judge recently dissolved an injunction that
threatened to halt many activities on six Idaho national forests in
order to protect endangered salmon. The injunction had prompted
angry protests in the forest-dependent community of Salmon, Idaho,
earlier this year (HCN, 2/20/95). But U.S. District Judge David
Ezra said a biological opinion released March 1 by the National
Marine Fisheries Service satisfied the Forest Service’s
consultation requirement for three species of salmon listed under
the Endangered Species Act. Environmentalists who sued the Forest
Service in 1992 say they are cautiously optimistic about the new
guidelines for protecting fish habitat on the Boise, Challis, Nez
Perce, Payette, Salmon and Sawtooth national forests. “(The
Fisheries Service) has finally laid out a framework for fixing the
forests,” says David Bayles of the Pacific Rivers Council. “When
push came to shove, it only took the agencies a few weeks to
complete a set of protections we can all live with.” Fisheries
Service biologists used the guidelines to analyze the effects of
hundreds of ongoing and planned timber sales, mining operations and
grazing allotments. The Forest Service says it will soon know which
projects need to be modified, or possibly even halted, to protect
streams where salmon spawn
*Paul
Larmer
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Idaho injunction lifted.
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