Covering Idaho, Montana and portions of the Dakotas, Region 1 of the U.S. Forest Service has reached a grim milestone.
Over 35,000 acres of forest projects on Region 1 National Forests are stymied by litigation. The amount of timber tied up in lawsuits (355 million board feet) is now more than region’s entire timber harvest of 321 million board feet. The situation will only get worse as activist groups sue the Forest Service to halt the Stonewall Vegetation Project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and pursue other lawsuits thanks to the Cottonwood decision. Here’s a breakdown from data the Forest Service provided:
