The law was a response to lawsuits involving various practices in the national forest, including timber harvesting.,[1][2] Zieske v Butz was the lawsuit brought by members of the Pt Baker Association on Prince of Wales Island against the US Forest Service's first environmental impact statement.
The suit halted logging on the NW tip of the island which consisted of 400,000 acres and resulted in a call by the timber industry for Congressional action to undo the lawsuit.
[3] Representative Foley noted on the floor that six other suits were blocking logging with holdings similar to Zieske v Butz.
The purpose of these objectives is to protect national forests from permanent damages from excessive logging and clear cutting.
"[7] These plans required alternative land management options to be presented, each of which have potential resource outputs (timber, range, mining, recreation) as well as socio-economic effects on local communities.
The Forest Service, in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), contributed considerable resources to the creation of FORPLAN (a linear programming model used to estimate the land management resource outputs) and IMPLAN to estimate the economic effects of these outputs on local communities.
In a post World War II economy, the demand for timber skyrocketed with the housing boom and people were recreating on public lands more than ever before.
[13] Stein v Barton In 1990, the Alaska District Court held that the US Forest Service's plan for Prince of Wales Island was arbitrary and capricious for rejecting 100 foot buffer strips on both sides of salmon streams when clearcutting.
The regulation required that planning "provide for diversity of plant and animal communities based on the suitability and capability of the specific land area in order to meet overall multiple-use objectives, and within the multiple-use objectives of a land management plan adopted pursuant to this section, provide, where appropriate, to the degree practicable, for steps to be taken to preserve the diversity of tree species similar to that existing in the region controlled by the plan."
In this region, environmental preservation efforts were thoroughly involved throughout the community yet timber harvesting was still a key economic dependency.
In 1991, the Seattle Audubon Society v. Evans case maintained that the Forest Service must still comply with NFMA requirements even though the Northern Spotted Owl had been listed "threatened" under Endangered Species Act (ESA).
[16] Ohio Forestry Association v. Sierra Club The Sierra Club claimed that the logging practices allowed in the Wayne National Forest in Southeast Ohio were unlawful under NFMA because the Act requires ongoing input and management from the Forest Service.
Ultimately, the court ruled in favor of agency discretion despite finding that the Forest Service used questionable science, though not to the degree that their decision could be considered arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).