Protecting the environment by providing legal services for forest cases of statewide significance

September 3, 2010 -- A federal judge is requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to revise a Bush administration recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, and the federal agency said Thursday it plans to release a draft next week.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Sep 03, 2010

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September 2, 2010 -- In what conservation groups say is a win for science over political manipulation, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service must revise its recovery and habitat designation plans for the northern spotted owl.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Sep 02, 2010

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August 24, 2010 -- Local timber interests are bracing for the potential impact of a court ruling that dirt, rock and sand runoff from logging roads is a form of pollution requiring a permit under the Clean Water Act.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Aug 24, 2010

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August 17, 2010 -- Today, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that rainwater channeled by logging roads into rivers and streams is pollution and can be regulated under the Clean Water Act.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Aug 17, 2010

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August 17, 2010 -- A federal appeals court Tuesday decided that mud washing off logging roads is pollution and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to write regulations to reduce the amount that reaches salmon streams.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Aug 17, 2010

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July 2, 2010 -- Pacific Northwest members of Congress ask the GAO to investigate the Softwood Lumber Agreement’s distribution of funds to groups in the United States, including those with ties to the U.S. timber industry.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Jul 02, 2010

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June 24, 2010 -- Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of one of the most controversial decisions ever for Northwest forests. On June 26th, 1990, the Northern Spotted Owl was put on the Endangered Species list. Scientists at the time were worried the Northern Spotted Owl was on the brink of extinction.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Jun 24, 2010

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May 28, 2010 -- The Kittitas County Prosecuting Attorney's Office will not charge two men involved in removing public records from the county's Community Development Services Department. Those records included parcel segregation requests initially submitted to the county by the American Forest Land Co. in 2004 and later amended and re-filed in 2007 along with two other sets of parcel segregation requests.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: May 28, 2010

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May 13, 2010 -- As many as one in every five new homes and a quarter of municipal buildings and office towers are expected to qualify as "green" buildings two years from now. But what does that really mean?

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: May 13, 2010

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April 12, 2010 -- The U.S. Green Building Council sets standards for environmentally superior buildings and must not dilute the value of its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design label, writes guest columnist Denis Hayes.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Apr 12, 2010

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March 29, 2010 -- Under a voluntary agreement with the state, Weyerhaeuser will review logging practices on southwest Washington lands where hundreds of landslides were unleashed during a December 2007 storm.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Mar 29, 2010

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As Eco-friendly Building Takes Off, the Fight Is on to Define What It Means to be Green

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Mar 03, 2010

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February 21, 2010 -- WFLC seeks to revoke Weyerhaeuser's SFI “green” certification for failure to protect water, soil and other resources. In a complaint filed last fall, WFLC alleges the company engaged in high-risk logging of unstable slopes—slopes that shed hundreds of landslides during an intense December 2007 rainstorm that triggered widespread downstream flooding.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Feb 21, 2010

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February 16, 2010 -- Every year, thousands of acres of high-value forest and agricultural lands in Washington are lost through conversion to commercial development, residential sprawl and other uses. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the Cascade Land Conservancy are working together to slow or reverse this trend.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Feb 16, 2010

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February 10, 2010 -- As more companies market their businesses to take advantage of growing consumer demand for earth-friendly products, legal battles are erupting over the veracity of such claims.

• Posted by tkaps
• Published: Feb 10, 2010

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