Local environmental organizations are once again anticipating legal action against the U.S. Forest Service if and when the agency permits short-leaf pine harvesting in Bell Smith Springs following a favorable Court of Appeals ruling for the agency.

Mark Donham, president of the Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists, filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Forest Service on Feb. 20. Donham represents the interests of local environmental outfits, Sierra Club, RACE and Heartwood of Indiana.

The 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Mar. 20 lifted a previous injunction placed upon the agency by the U.S. District Court in Benton that enjoined the Forest Service from permitting timber harvests on already contracted land of 3,400 acres of discontinuous short-leaf pine trees in an area dubbed Opportunity Area 6, located on the 10,000 acre Bell Smith Springs area in the Shawnee National Forest.

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The notice requests the U.S. Forest Service examine and explain the full impacts of pine harvesting on the Bell Smith Springs area. Donham intends to sue under the federal Endangered Species Act and claims that endangered Indiana bats are making habitat in the lofty short-leaf pines.

Administrative appeals to the Forest Service often undermine the authority and competence of the agency’s decisions to follow through with Congressional directives and forest management objectives.

Louise Odegaard, Shawnee National Forest supervisor, arrived at the 280,000-acre Shawnee five years ago and plays an integral role in the management of multiple uses on the Shawnee. Odegaard was transferred from the 2 million-acre Custer National Forest which spans 240 miles across three states. Odegaard notices the stark public differences that emerge regarding federal management of public lands, but said those differences are as old as the resources.

The controversy surrounding federal lands is nothing new, Odegaard said. We are going through these cycles again that were debated 100 years ago, and the outcome was the establishment of the national forests.

And the pending legal suit, which Donham said is contingent upon the agency’s harvesting decisions, is an indication of the ongoing public debate over public land management, which began 93 years ago when the U.S. Forest Service was created under the directive of the Roosevelt administration in 1905.

The word management implies that something be done, Odegaard said. The direction given us by Congress directs us to ask the public what they would like for us to do with national lands.

And to put [public concerns] together in a workable document that provides the best balance of utilizing those resources without hurting those resources through management activities.

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Public, workable documents come in the form of Environmental Impact Statements produced by the Forest Service. Opponents to the pine harvests in Bell Smith Springs are demanding the Forest Service create new statements addressing specific environmental impacts stemming from management activities on the Shawnee like the agency’s current ecological restoration project.

Ecological restoration looks to enhance wildlife diversity in Bell Smith Springs through removal of non-native short-leaf pine trees. After the harvest, native, hardwood ecosystems would dominate where pine plantations currently exist. The short-leaf pines were planted in the ’30s on degraded, over-farmed top soil atop ridges overlooking Bell Smith Springs. The pines were planted to prevent soil erosion and to serve as a continuing supply of timber for the United States lumber market.

The Shawnee’s Forest Plan, which expires in 2001, was drafted in 1986 and subsequently subjected to 26 independent appeals. It was amended in 1992 and further defined by the Sierra Club’s legal victory against the U.S. Department of Agriculture shortly after. The court ruling permanently enjoined the Forest Service from allowing ATVs in the Shawnee, engaging in hardwood sales and leasing land to oil and gas concerns.

Odegaard said grievances with forest management policies are always addressed by the agency. Sometimes, parties are dissatisfied with the Forest Service’s internal handling of complaints and legal expenses arise when all administrative channels are exhausted.

Costs in court are not so much in terms of money. But the way you need to look at it is that people have a right to disagree with the agency, Odegaard said.

Becky Banker, spokeswoman for the Forest Service, said the public should not forget that the agency is directed by Congress, and one of their many objectives defined by the USDA is the production, as well as the protection, of natural resources.

There are diverse demands [of the Shawnee], and little acreage to meet those demands, Banker said. We are directed by 114 laws, but we look to strike an acceptable balance between the public and what we are mandated to do through multiple uses of the land.

Donham said the Forest Service would do good to conduct a study on the effects of the Indiana Bat in Bell Smith Springs thus diminishing the possibility of legal action. Environmentalists use a wide range of species, such as the bat and the Pine Warbler, both presumed by Donham to use short-leaf pine plantations and protected under the Endangered Species Act, to force the Forest Service to modify and delay management objectives in Bell Smith Springs.

Odegaard said there are thousands of acres of pine in the Shawnee that are left alone to sustain state-protected species like the Pine Warbler or Indiana Bat, which Donham said is present in Bell Smith Springs although he has never located one.

The Forest Service reported that the bats have never used the short-leaf pines in Opportunity Area 6 and stated that pine harvesting would not likely affect the bats’ habitat adversely.

Donham said the Forest Service bases their findings on sweeping assumptions.

Banker said the Forest Service is a scientific-based organization that is deeply committed to protecting the resources and wildlife of throughout the whole Shawnee.

Any time you do a project on the ground there are some species which will diminish and some that flourish by the activities, Banker said. The whole purpose [of ecological restoration] is to stimulate the growth of hardwoods and to look at hardwoods opposed to pine trees and what they will support species-wise.

The short-leaf pine trees, which are state-protected species, are not native to the Bell Smith Springs area and are near the end of their life cycles. Stands of hardwoods already have found a place within the interior of some pine plantations, and Banker said the Forest Service’s obligation is to accelerate that hardwood growth, which will stimulate the presence of native species.

The pines are near the end of their lives and we have made the determination that is much more important to get oak and hickory out there and provide habitat for all local species, including a lot of these area-sensitive, forest-interior migratory songbirds, Banker said. The pine is not native and should be removed, and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources supports the removal.

Odegaard said restoration is important in that it will bring migratory songbirds into the area rather than maintaining the Pine Warbler given its large population.

[The Forest Service] is charged with many things, Odegaard said. But we’re not charged with protecting something that is really common someplace else and at the edge of its habitat.

We are not an island and we have to look at our neighboring forests in Indiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, Odegaard said. We have to take a look at what is going on globally as well as what is going on in this forest.