Oregon Public Broadcasting

Environmentalists are celebrating the stoppage of an 8000-acre logging project on the Deschutes National Forest.

A federal judge agreed Friday with a lawsuit filed by environmental groups.  They said the 'Five Buttes Project' would reduce old-growth spotted owl habitat near Bend.

Greer Kelly is the sales supervisor at Interfor, one of the timber companies involved. He says his crew has almost finished logging its part of the initial timber sale.

The real problem, Kelly says, is that Interfor was counting on future timber sales to keep its sawmill running.

Greer Kelly: “There’s no forest management, or management of our public lands any more without judges or lawyers. And so nothing surprises me after 30 years of doing this.”

The U.S. Forest Service originally acknowledged the timber sale would reduce old growth in the short term.

But the agency also showed the judge a computer simulation that the logging would reduce the risk of a dangerous wildfire in the future, which it argued would save spotted owl habitat in the long term.