In mid-October, Shoshone National Forest Supervisor Becky Aus announced the withdrawal of the Double Cabin timber sale north of Dubois. Aus's decision was prompted by a lawsuit brought by WOC, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) and other conservation groups to prevent the sale.
The Double Cabin area is a broad basin hemmed by forested mountains and bisected by the Wiggins Fork of the Wind River. The area is a popular back-country recreation destination and the jumping-off point for hiking and horsepacking trips into the nearby Washakie Wilderness.
A key migration corridor for the Wiggins Fork elk herd, Double Cabin is occupied by grizzly bears and shelters rare lynx and northern goshawks. The Wiggins Fork, eligible for designation under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, provides excellent fishing for Yellowstone cutthroat trout.
Inexplicably, given Double Cabin's value to campers, anglers and wilderness explorers and its wealth of wildlife, the Shoshone National Forest remains determined to conduct a 117-acre timber sale in this un-inventoried roadless area right on the boundary of the Washakie Wilderness that would clearcut 74 acres and require repeated crossings of the shallow, braided channels of the Wiggins Fork with heavy equipment. WOC unsuccessfully appealed this timber sale in 1998, but the sale was later delayed by the Forest Service's 18-month moratorium on road building in roadless areas.
In June, the Shoshone announced that it would begin cutting timber at Double Cabin the day after the road-building moratorium expired, using a "log forwarder" that would not require a permanent road-a not-so-subtle attempt to make an end-run around the Forest Service's efforts to protect roadless areas.
WOC, GYC, the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, represented by Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, immediately filed a lawsuit requesting an injunction, charging that the Shoshone violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act by failing to consider the sale's cumulative environmental impacts and its effects on a roadless area and by failing to prepare a supplemental statement regarding its plans to use a log forwarder to transport logs.
In announcing the Shoshone's withdrawal of the Double Cabin sale, Forest Supervisor Aus said that the forest had "discovered some minor technical problems with the decision notice that we want to correct prior to taking this project through legal action." Wind River District Ranger Bob Lee said the Shoshone "fully intends to go ahead with the sale."
Aus described the sale as "a good project and an outstanding example of good resource management," claiming that logging in a roadless area on the boundary of the Washakie Wilderness will "benefit forest health, recreation experiences, visual quality and wildlife habitat."
Earthjustice attorney Sanjay Narayan responded, "We hope that the Shoshone will eventually recognize that a clearcut in this spectacular roadless area is fundamentally misguided. This 'time out' gives the forest supervisor a chance to take a realistic look at the damage this sale will cause and then make the right decision: withdraw the sale and protect Double Cabin for hunters, anglers, hikers, horsepackers and the elk, trout, goshawk, grizzly bears and other wildlife that make their home here."
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