A coalition of loggers in Minnesota is pursuing a novel legal strategy to open up national forests for timber cutting, claiming in a lawsuit filed last month that the U.S. Forest Service is foisting the “religion” of the Deep Ecology movement on all Americans by adopting it as a guiding principle for forest management. The suit, filed against the USFS and two enviro groups that have tied up timber sales in Minnesota, contends that the Forest Service’s restrictions on timber sales violate the Constitution because the government is promoting one religion above others. Enviros are dumbfounded, saying that their protests have not been spiritual but scientific and technical, as they’ve pointed out flaws in the Forest Service’s environmental impact reports and financial projections.
