Two environmental groups are challenging a timber sale outside of Springfield that they say is the largest clear-cut on federal land in 20 years. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in Eugene.
The project, called The Second Show Timber Sale, is on nearly 260 acres of Bureau of Land Management Land near Shotgun Creek outside Springfield. Nick Cady is with Cascadia Wildlands, one of the conservation groups which filed the lawsuit. He says the BLM neglected to analyze the effects of the project in relation to other private logging projects in the area.
Cady: "Part of the reasons for the challenge is, these are mature forests, these are 80 year old forests and we just don't see clearcutting mature forests like this, or we haven’t in a really long time."
Cady says federal law requires the BLM to look at how their timber sale affects communities combined with other logging projects in the surrounding area.
A spokeswoman for the BLM says they're still reviewing the lawsuit.
