Groups intervene in Sierra lawsuit

SACRAMENTO -- Environmental groups said Tuesday they will intervene in a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service's plan for 11.5 million acres of Sierra Nevada national forests. They say the federal government may not defend its own proposal.

That's become a pattern for the Bush administration, the three groups contend in a 15-page motion they plan to file in federal court in Sacramento today.

The Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign want permission to defend the government's original proposal to reduce the danger of wildfire while protecting wildlife in 11 national forests along the California-Nevada border.

The Bush administration is trying to rewrite the plan approved in the closing days of the Clinton administration. As such, the environmental groups allege it may not actively defend the plan or will use the suit as a legal excuse to justify pending amendments that environmental groups oppose.

Not aggressively defending such lawsuits "amounts to an open invitation for timber, mining and ranching interests to sue," alleged Craig Thomas, director of the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign.

For example, environmental groups say the administration failed to defend the Forest Services' policy to prohibit building roads in 58.5 million acres forest land last year. A federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the policy in December.

And on Friday, the administration said it had reached a settlement with Utah that environmental groups say would open millions of acres of wilderness to drilling, mining and logging. An appellate court rejected the suit in 1998, but the state of Utah revived the suit last month.

Forest Service spokesmen did not immediately return telephone messages Tuesday from The Associated Press.

The suit challenging the Sierra plan was filed last month by Plumas County and the Quincy Library Group, an unusual coalition of local environmentalists and logging interests that took its name from the location where members met to draft an aggressive fire protection proposal.

Their proposal was eventually enacted by Congress, but the group contends its law is undermined by both the Forest Service's existing plan and the proposed changes that are due for environmental and public review this summer.

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