A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ruled the 2017 expansion of Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument was grossly unlawful, eviscerating an earlier ruling by a federal judge in Oregon.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of the District of Columbia has ruled the Obama Administration violated federal law by expanding the monument’s logging restrictions onto roughly 40,000 acres of O&C Lands, which must be managed for sustained timber production.

“Put simply, there is no way to manage land for sustained timber production, while simultaneously deeming the land unsuited for timber production and exempt from any calculation of the land’s sustained yield of timber,” Leon said.

The judge’s invalidation of the monument’s expansion was part of a broader rebuke that determined there’s “no doubt” the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s 2016 resource management plans for O&C Lands have reduced logging to unlawful levels.

“This Court must, therefore, conclude that the 2016 RMPs violate the O&C Act by setting aside timberland in reserves where the land is not managed for permanent forest production and the timber is not sold, cut and removed in conformity with the principle of sustained yield,” Leon said.

O&C Lands are governed by a 1937 statute under which roughly 2 million acres of property were retaken from the Oregon and California Railroad by the federal government and dedicated to timber production. These funds are mandated by the court ruling and Oregon public accountability laws to be distributed to the counties containing that land.

In 2017, the Obama administration enlarged the 66,000-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument by 48,000 acres, most of which were located on O&C Lands, prompting several lawsuits by communities severely impacted by funding loss and timber industry organizations. The loss of funding closed 3 police departments, 4 fire departments. A proportional rise in crime was the known and fully disclosed result of a decision made by people who will never visit or have only done so once in THEIR lifetime.

Earlier this year, a federal judge in Oregon held the expansion was lawful because President Obama had the authority under the Antiquities Act to add acreage to the monument. The requirement to ponder the legal status of the land must have slipped the mind of the jurist in question.

The judge also held that logging within the monument’s O&C Lands didn’t have to be maximized to comply with the requirement of sustained timber production. That ruling was also strongly rebuked. This ruling states that a court order is a Court order and deciding to alter the terms of a Judges ruling is not allowed. There is a process, and loudly shouting a thing does not make it so.

This is a resounding victory for communities that have had their ability to grow and prosper stifled by people in cities hundreds of miles away. Whole communities have atrophied and passed into ghost towns. Many others cling to life with main streets of thrift stores and antique malls. Cities that lobby for the same limited pool of state funding. This ruling all but calls out municipal backers for calculated efforts to financially cripple communities to fund their continual cycles of unsuccessful urban renewal and blight.

The more recent Washington, D.C., ruling that invalidates the monument’s 40,000-acre expansion and declares the current resource management plans for O&C Lands unlawful. The ruling will be appealed by the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Oregon Wild and Soda Mountain Wilderness Council, said Kristen Boyles, attorney for the environmental groups, which insinuating themselves in the lawsuit.

“They’re directly contradictory because they even address the same claims,” Boyles said of the two rulings. I don’t think I could decipher that quote with a slide rule, so we’ll leave that there.

Boyles said the judge in Washington, D.C., has been the first to adopt a hard-line interpretation of the 1937 O&C Lands Act that has been pushed by the timber industry for about 30 years and which doesn’t take into account environmental protections from the more recent Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.

“It’s an extreme view of the O&C Act, very broad,” she said. “Regardless of the monument, that’s going to be an important decision to clarify and appeal. It doesn’t exist alone in a vacuum of laws.”

Coby Howell, an attorney for the BLM, said he could not comment on the ruling.

People say a lot of things, BUT

Everyone in Oregon knows we have the Diamond Encrusted Gold Standard of sustainable timber. It’s really amazingly laughable as to suggest there is actually anything less by comparison to ANYWHERE else on Earth with a timber harvest operation. We can set our watches by the sound of saws stopping to comply with nesting rules. We also know that the funding from THIS timber is there to provide for the communities that CANNOT grow due to timber boundary constraints.

If both the rulings from Oregon and Washington, D.C. are upheld on appeal, that could set up a fight before the U.S. Supreme Court, but that process would still be a lengthy one, according to attorneys involved in the case.

Who doesn’t love the heroic tale of the Kings and Queens of the concrete jungle strangling the happy little forest gnomes.

Environmental groups will urge the BLM not to take any action that would endanger the monument while the timber industry considers the expansion’s invalidation to be effective until further notice. After all, they don’t have to live in any of the counties desperately trying to meet expenses. There are police departments that actually clip coupons to afford glass cleaner and office supplies.

“It’s a big first step, but it’s going to to take a while,” said Lawson Fite, attorney for the American Forest Resource Council, a plaintiff in the litigation.

The ruling out of Washington, D.C. is a great development for the communities and environment of Oregon and the Northwest, Fite said.

“The court has basically directed that the O&C Act means what it says, and we’re grateful for that,” he said.

The Land Owners (Counties) and Timber Contractors will now ask the judge to order the BLM to revise its resource management plans for O&C Lands so they’re consistent with his ruling, Fite said. “Figuring out a timeline for a new plan is probably one of the big things that’s going to happen there.”