Lawsuit Challenges Logging and Burning Project in Utah’s Dixie National Forest

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Wildlands Defense, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council for Wildlife and Fish sued the U.S. Forest Service in federal district court in Utah for approving logging and burning throughout the Dixie National Forest’s Pine Valley Ranger District in southeast Utah.  Kevin Wright, Supervisor for the Dixie National Forest, authorized the project’s implementation by signing a Decision Notice in May 2025.

The Project will log, masticate, roller mulch, and burn 127,667 acres, which is a substantial portion of the 209,731 acres of the Pine Valley Ranger District.

It’s scientifically proven that logging and burning may actually increase the severity of wildfires by opening up the forest floor to more solar radiation and wind. But we are challenging the Forest Service in court because it’s violating the Dixie National Forest Plan, which has specific requirements for northern goshawk, big game winter range, and old growth habitat.

Plan would destroy old growth forests that are critical to Northern Goshawk and Pinyon Jay habitat

The Dixie Forest Plan requires the agency to maintain at least the minimum level of goshawk habitat needed to ensure a viable population.  Yet the Forest Service failed to even estimate how much habitat is required for goshawks according to the best available science, or how much habitat will be destroyed by the project.

The Dixie National Forest Plan requires the agency to manage each drainage in the Forest to ensure that 7-10% are old growth forests. The agency’s own data shows that the forest currently has less mature and old growth than required.  In spite of this, the Pine Valley project calls for logging and burning even more of what’s left of the old growth forest.

The sad fact is that goshawk numbers have plummeted. Given that goshawks are very specifically dependent on mature and old growth forests, which are already severely lacking in the Dixie National Forest, the project would only result in even more destruction of critical goshawk habitat.

Moreover, Pinyon Jay populations have nose-dived — plummeting by over 85 percent in the last 50 years — mainly due to habitat loss caused by Forest Service and BLM deforestation projects. Yet this project will add to that decline by destroying the very pinyon pine and juniper trees that pinyon jays rely on to survive.

Big game will suffer

Much to the disappointment of hunters, the Dixie National Forest’s deer population was at 57,000 in 2023.  That’s 10,000 deer below their objective. The Forest Plan requirement for big game habitat requires the agency to maintain at least 30 percent of shrub plants in a mature age, and at least 10 percent in a young stage in big game winter range.

Yet the agency’s knee-jerk reaction to this population decline is to burn even more of the juniper and other forage plants that deer need to survive the winter.  Last summer, a lightning-caused fire already burned through the roadless areas in Pine Valley last summer. Hunters surely can’t be happy that the federal government wants to spend their tax dollars destroying even more big game habitat.

Plan won’t reduce wildfires, but will harm public health

The Forest Service claims they are doing this to protect homes from wildfire.  But the agency’s top wildfire scientist found the only way to effectively protect homes from wildfires is by having nonflammable roofs and decks and trimming shrubs and trees up to 100 feet out from a house.  Anything beyond that is a waste of money and destroys wildlife habitat.

The Forest Service estimates it will take ten years to complete the project, which means people in southeast Utah will have to suffer through ten springs and falls of smoke-filled air. According to Dr. Brian Moench of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment: “Prescribed burns have never been shown to reduce the public’s overall exposure to forest fire smoke.  In fact, a recent study found that as many people die from prescribed burn smoke as from wildfire smoke. It’s unfortunate that the only way to protect public health from ten years of Forest Service malpractice is to take them to court.”

Forest Service already lost on these same issues in 2006

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the Alliance and against the Dixie National Forest on these same issues in 2006.  Yet the Forest Service is routinely operating outside the law by destroying wildlife and their habitat.  By doing so, the federal government is forcing grassroots forest activists to exercise our First Amendment rights and the citizen enforcement provisions in the law to challenge their decision in court. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Please consider helping up in our efforts.

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