The case here is Wilderness Society, et al., v. US Forest Service, and in it the Court examined a similiar prior case (Citizens for a Better Forestry v. US Sep't of Agriculture), which conculded that the wholesale neglect of the mandatory inclusion of the public in the decision making process results in a procedural injury, and that the "added risk to the environemt that takes place when governmental decision makers make up their minds without an analysis (with public comment) of the likely effects of their decision on the environment..."
In the present case the plaintiffs alleged that the Forest Service erred by failing to conduct any environmental analysis under NEPA or consultation under ESA. much less provide the opportunity for public comment on the results of that environment review.
My point here is twofold: first, in the private sector such "wholesale neglect" would cost someone their job--unless the "oversight" was "sanctioned," and, second, the government is always arguing that it cannot not adequately function because it's always too busy fighting in court--yet the litigation would seem to come only after the blatant refusal of the gov. to follow the law!

The trees get to live a little longer. I see the court's thinking Michael. Sooner or later the trees will be harvested but with oversight. Maybe the harvesters won't totally wreck the enviornment in that case. We know they will if left to do as they please.

Personally I'm thinking there is no need at all to harvest the trees in these last pristine areas.
Every industrialized country (except the US) has legalized hemp farming, such we can live without harvesting forests.
In Tasmania the ecologically rich old-growth forests are in danger from logging by GUNNS Limited (a company not above trying to undermine democracy in Tasmania), this where Austrialian paper manufacturers use up 500,000 cubic meters of native forest each year, as well as importing Indonesian pulp.
A study has shown that two Indonesian pulp producers plan to clear almost 500,000 hectares (1.23 million acres) of forest by 2007.
A group of leading plant scientists have warned that one in four of the world's plant species could already be on the brink of extinction, and as many as half of the planet's estimated 400,000 plant species face a similar future... Who can actually foretell what the future might hold should "we" continue such destructive practices.
On the one hand, extinction of species is a "natural" occurrence, yet, on the other hand, the "introduction" of new species is also a natural occurrence--one that we are bringing to a complete halt.
Who knows what new dreaded diseases will "spring up" due to this "blow to natural diversion"...
All I know is that the New Testament says that Man has dominion over all the earth and over every living thing--and that it's a self-evident truth that destructive exploitation is not "social science"...

While I applaud every court ruling against this administration,I don't expect it to do much good if they are allowed to continue to ignore the constitution, federal laws, international law and treaties with impunity. Who is going to enforce the law?

Ranselar,
Unlike torture, which can be done secretly in a back room somewhere (doesn't even need to be in the US), it's pretty hard to clearcut a forest without someone noticing.

Michael, I agree that we shouldn't be harvesting these trees at all -- and that's what this fight is all about. The Clinton rule would prohibit all destructive activities in these areas. The right wing corporate types go crazy just thinking about this, which explains the huge fight.

ML; I ask again, WHO IS GOING TO ENFORCE THE LAW? I have watched as more laws have been violated in the past five years than I can began to count and no one is doing anything about it!

While the politicization of the forests and the ensuing litigation runs amok, we should remember that forests do not need to be owned by the government. Private parties not only take better ecological care of their land but also put it to its highest-valued use -- be that water recreation, conservation, or timber/mineral usage. Of course, progressives are trying to avoid use for timber or minerals. But if owned by the government, favors to timber companies like those from the 50s to the 80s that resulted in clear-cutting and high-cost high-maintenance road building tend to be the result. This is the lesson of the nobel-prize winning work on public choice that progressives seem not to have yet realized: government doles out concentrated interest favors. But if privately-owned, where it is profitable to sell wood or oil, the owner has an incentive to manage the land back to an aesthetically-pleasing condition if for no other reason than he/she/it wants the land to remain valuable for future sale. Then maybe the Sierra Club buys it and leaves it alone. People need houses and poor people need to be warm too. Wood and oil are useful to everyone, not just timber and oil companies. At the margin, a poor person may afford to rent a nice place to live because sustainable logging or drilling was allowed on private land.

Mr. Rotondi's claim that private landowners take better care of their holdings is simply wrong in the context of the timber industry. Private timberlands have been largely trashed, which has led to the assault on the public's forests. Public ownership can lead to corruption; that's true. But a blanket assertion that "Private parties . . .take better ecological care of their land" is pure flapdoodle.

Flapdoodle is a new word for me, but my reading is that it means "baloney." Private parties do take better ecological care of their land. Ecological does not mean not using the land. It means sustaining the land. I am not sure which private forests Mr. Turner refers to as being "trashed," but whatever owner allowed that to happen is acting against his or her incentives.