Ever since the Forest Service in 1964 endorsed clearcutting as an acceptable method of harvesting trees on public lands, a running battle has been fought on the issue between conservationists and the timber industry. To the latter, the technique of logging all trees within a designated area, irrespective of their age, size, and health, is the most efficient way to meet the nation's timber needs in a time of rapidly climbing prices. Conservationists, on the other hand, charge that clearcutting is needlessly wasteful of growing trees, creates serious erosion problems, and defaces the landscape.

On November 6, a federal judge at Elkins, West Virginia, handed conservationists a stunning victory.¹ Judge Robert Maxwell ruled that the Organic Act of 1897² does not permit clearcutting on federal owned forest lands. Plaintiffs, West Virginia Division of the Izaak Walton League, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, and an individual West Virginia resident, sought declaratory and injunctive relief to assure that in three proposed timber harvesting contracts, and in all future contracts, matured, or large-growth trees that had previously been selected and marked by Forest Service personnel, would require the removal of all felled trees. The plaintiffs pointed to §476 of the Organic Act, which provides that "for the purpose of preserving the living and growing timber and promoting the younger growth on national forests, the Secretary of Agriculture . . . may cause to be designated . . . so much of the dead, matured or large growth of trees found upon such may sell the same." The defendants, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz and several officials of the Forest Service, argued that §475 of the Act, which states that the purpose of establishing national forests is in part "to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the uses and necessities of the citizens of the United States," should be given great weight. Clearcutting, they urged, represented a decision that a group of trees had been determined to be collectively "dead, matured, or large growth." By the same logic, they contended, trees could be "designated" as a group. Extension of this "collective" argument to the Act's requirement that all cut timber be removed would seem difficult, but the defendants somewhat bafflingly explained that "the same approach can be applied to the 'cut and remove' language—every tree and stick need not be removed."