And once in a while you read some good news:

Plumas forest projects halted

In a resounding repudiation of the Bush administration’s national forest management, a three-judge federal panel has ordered a halt to three major logging projects in the Plumas National Forest.

Logging had been set to begin June 1 but now cannot go forward until an environmental impact assessment conforms to a Clinton administration forest management plan, the panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Judge John T. Noonan Jr. wrote the opinion and also a concurrence that says the U.S. Forest Service has an inherent conflict of interest when it sells large trees to finance fire protection efforts, as called for under the Bush plan.

“The financial incentive of the Forest Service in implementing the forest plan is as operative, as tangible, and as troublesome as it would be if … the agency was the paid accomplice of the loggers,” Noonan wrote.

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