Is resource management in the United States controlled by the courts?
In the United States almost any activity by the National Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or Fish and Wildlife Service can be challenged in federal courts.
The Sierra Club, Friends of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Arizona’s Center For Biological Diversity, humane society and other special interest groups can use the federal courts to delay, stop or change almost any activity contemplated by federal resource managers be it harvesting, thinning of trees or managing wildlife.
The best example is the ongoing battle between the U.S. Fish & Wild life Service attempting to de-list the timber wolf and turn over the management to the states and environmental groups who want the wolf to remain on endangered species.
For the last five years and six times petitions to the federal courts have prevented the F&WS from de-listing the timber wolf.
Some critics say the increasing timber wolf population in Minnesota is threatening the moose population in north eastern Minnesota.
Dale Lueck, an Aitkin County cattle rancher, and Gerald Tayler, a retired real estate developer, are moving forward with a lawsuit to force the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to de-list the timber wolf.
This will be an uphill battle as biologists with the Arizona based Center for Biological Diversity want to expand the recovery of the timber wolf across the country not just the five percent now occupied by wolves.
In 2008 a similar petition was lodged by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Canada’s fear
A proposed endangered species act considered in Canada could threaten up to 33 percent of Ontario’s timber supply, according to the province forestry officials.
The act would be enacted to protect the forest habitat for a diminishing sub species of the woodland caribou that is more numerous than moose or deer.
Under the proposed endangered species act, special permits would be needed and would expose the government to frivolous legal challenges by special interest groups as practiced in the United States.
The provence would be handing resource management over to the courts.
Ridlington is a media volunteer for the Society of American Foresters. He was Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Commission forester in Aitkin County for 22 years from 1957 to 1980, and district forester in Park Rapids for seven years.
