Wolf Tracks

An environmental group goes to court to see the forest service's plans to protect Oregon wolves.

TIMBER WOLVES: These gray wolf pups, photographed in 2012, are part of the Oregon-based Wenaha Pack in Wallowa County.

But even as wolves return to Oregon's southwestern mountains, Cady fears the U.S. Forest Service will authorize logging and road building that could cut off the wolves' range.

"Federal agencies are supposed to lay out how projects will impact species," Cady says. "What we've seen with wolves is they say, 'Oh, it won't impact them at all.' I don't think that is true."

This spring, Cady's environmental nonprofit, Cascadia Wildlands, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all Forest Service plans for protecting wolves while selling off timber and building roads in Oregon and Washington's national forests. Two months later, the agency hasn't given him a single document.

So Cady's group has gone to court, suing the Forest Service in U.S. District Court on May 20 for its failure to respond to Cascadia Wildlands' records request.

Lawsuits accusing government agencies of violating the FOIA have become a reliable tool for environmental groups trying to watchdog public officials.

Cascadia Wildlands' suit is the 10th lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for Oregon in the past decade by an environmental group seeking to force the release of public records. It's the second in less than a month. On April 29, the Northwest Environmental Defense Center in Portland sued to see water-quality records from the Columbia Generating Station in Hanford, Wash.

Cascadia Wildlands says it filed the records request March 12, seeking communications between the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The suit says Cascadia Wildlands then wrote letters in April and May offering to let the Forest Service release the documents gradually.

The Forest Service responded in May by saying it needed more time to review the request, because it had 20 other records requests ahead of Wildlands'.

Glen Sachet, a spokesman for the Forest Service's Portland office, declined comment to WW on pending litigation.

Oregon officials estimate 77 wolves live in the state, but just seven of them are in the western half of the state. The largest Cascade Range wolf pack, called the Rogue Pack, includes OR-7, his mate and three pups.

Cady fears that commercial logging could disrupt the wolves' range, expose them to cars and change the behavior of deer and elk, making it harder for wolves to find food. The group also says building new timber roads makes it easier for hunters to get deep into the wilderness and set wolf traps.

He says his group wants assurances from the Forest Service that the agency's plans take into account protections for the Rogue Pack and the next generation of Oregon wolves.

"We just hope they're taking a hard look at the science before proceeding with irretrievable resource damage and road construction," Cady says. "They might have taken a good, hard look at this. But I don't think that's the case. We’ll find out.” 

WWeek 2015

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