Court Allows Logging Exemptions : Environment: Justices let stand opinion that permits harvesting of old-growth forests. Action is a blow to those seeking to save the northern spotted owl.

SAN FRANCISCO —  Avoiding a bitter environmental fight in the Pacific Northwest, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand Monday an appeals court ruling that threw out a key argument in lawsuits seeking to block harvesting of ancient forests.

The justices, without comment, declined to review a ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last September against the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in a series of lawsuits aimed at restricting logging on public lands.

The environmental groups had argued that government plans to allow logging of virgin, or old-growth, public forests were illegal because they had failed to consider new information about how such activity might hasten the extinction of the northern spotted owl.

Federal law usually forbids federal agencies to take actions that threaten species with extinction. But a recent temporary congressional exemption allows the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to implement plans they have already adopted even if new evidence indicates that those plans may push some species closer to extinction.

“It allows them to put on environmental blinders when dealing with these outdated plans,” said Vic Sher, a lawyer for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in Seattle.

Sher said a federal court judge in Seattle had ruled last year that the Bureau of Land Management was “arbitrary and capricious” in ignoring “new, significant and probably accurate information about the potential extinction of the northern spotted owl.”

But Sher added that the judge felt she was unable to force the bureau to rewrite its logging plans because of the exemption granted by Congress.

The temporary exemption was added onto annual appropriations bills for the Forest Service and land management bureau by timber state legislators who feared that protecting the spotted owl and other species might cost the jobs of thousands of forest-products workers.

Environmental groups have been challenging federal timber harvest practices from California to the Canadian border, arguing that cutting plans threaten to destroy irreplaceable old-growth forests and wipe out several species of animals and plants that depend on them.

Mark Rutzick, a Portland, Ore., lawyer who represents the Northwest Forest Resources Council, said Monday’s ruling was an important victory for loggers. But he said its long-term implications are unclear because the land management bureau has begun reviewing the impact that logging has on threatened species. Logging continues while the study is under way.

Rutzick added that a more important fight will start April 3, when both sides are scheduled to open arguments in a lawsuit over a broad compromise Congress enacted last year.

The compromise, pushed by timber state lawmakers led by Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.), sought to balance the needs of nature with the needs of the region’s timber-based economy. Over the objection of several top environmental groups, it authorizes temporary harvests somewhat below traditional levels and forbids most legal challenges.

Environmentalists contend that the peculiar language in the compromise law actually lets loggers cut down more trees this year than in the past.