The Utah Environmental Congress has filed a federal lawsuit to stop commercial logging of old-growth spruce trees in the Fishlake National Forest.

UEC is suing the U.S. Forest Service and the Fishlake National Forest over a 123-acre timber sale that Forest officials are calling a "salvage" project at the head of Upper Lost Creek and Gooseberry Creek to remove "beetle-infested, diseased, mature and dead timber stands."

But conservationists say this timber sale is part of a larger project that the Intermountain Regional Forester rejected at the request of UEC in 2000. At that time, the forester concluded that the proposal was in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act.

Local forest officials, however, have cut the project into four separate parcels — each of a size small enough that environmental laws governing timber sales no longer apply under President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative.

Conservationists are crying foul.

"Federal agencies under the Bush administration are increasingly acting as if they are above the law," said Stephanie Tidwell, executive director of UEC. "If a project is halted because it conflicts with existing environmental laws, they simply gut the law or chop the project up into smaller pieces that can be categorically excluded."

Fishlake National Forest Supervisor Mary Erickson doesn't dispute the fact that it's part of the same project the regional forester had concerns about. "We feel we addressed those issues," she said.

Erickson said she couldn't comment on the lawsuit because she hasn't seen the complaint. But she said the "Seven Mile Spruce Beetle Management Project," signed by the Richfield District Ranger Fred Houston on May 7, is needed to stop the spread of the spruce beetle.

"It's intended to reduce the density of stands," Erickson said. "With that we hope it would make the trees left less susceptible to the spruce beetle."

Conservationists say the logging would harm sensitive species who rely on old-growth forests. It would also impair watersheds such as Lost Creek, a tributary to the Sevier River. It also is illegal.

"The Bush Administration has indeed weakened many landmark environmental laws in the past four years, but this timber sale is illegal even under these newer, weaker safeguards," said Joel Ban, an attorney representing UEC.

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E-mail: donna@desnews.com