The US Forest Service has revised its guidelines for management of wildlife on national forests in Arizona and New Mexico, and in doing so has rejected a decade of restoration-based forest management, according to a ENN report. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has filed a formal objection to the first logging project to be proposed under the new guidelines. The Jack Smith/Schultz timber sale on the Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff, Arizona, would log more than 8,000 acres, including an undisclosed number of large, old-growth trees.

It is the first project to explicitly implement the agency’s major changes to the Northern Goshawk Management Guidelines, which the Forest Service developed in 1996 in response to litigation by the CBD over the agency’s poor record of protecting the imperilled species, the report stated. In the spring of 2007, the Forest Service made major changes to the 1996 Northern Goshawk Guidelines, which affect management of all ponderosa pine forest on national forests in the Southwest. It is feared the new guidelines could signal a new round of timber wars in the Southwest. CBD spokesman Todd Schulke: “The Forest Service has illegally amended every forest plan in the South-west Region by failing to involve the public and state agencies prior to implementing this substantial weakening of the Goshawk Guidelines. The new Forest Service guidelines will spell disaster for the goshawk, and for south-western old growth forests.” The Goshawk Guidelines require the Forest Service to leave a specified percentage of the forest as canopy cover to provide habitat for goshawks and their prey. The changes will significantly weaken this requirement, and could lead to dramatically increased logging of large old-growth trees, the report said.