Presumably they'll have to go back and craft a more responsible plan.
This wasn't a no-logging-versus-lots-of-logging kind of battle. It was people asking them to take some new, smarter approaches to logging. We're saying, do it smarter. Don't go into these places that shouldn't be logged, like right next to a salmon stream.
That's significant. We're not just tweaking around the edges here. This is a pretty big deal.
The judge basically told Commissioner Sutherland and the Board of Natural Resources that they sharply increased logging without taking a close look at what that would mean for the environment and the public's resources, such as water and salmon and older forests.
This agreement protects acres of old forests that are good for the owl and other animals that would not have had protection otherwise.
There's a heck of a lot of work to be done under this agreement, and it's really how things pan out over the next couple of years that determines whether we have a new day here. But I can honestly tell you that everybody's giving it a good shot.
