Legal Pursuits

We are dedicated to achieving full protection for our federal public forestlands.

The John Muir Project goes to court to enforce federal environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), and the Endangered Species Act (ESA), in order to protect forest ecosystems, imperiled wildlife, and forest carbon storage for climate change mitigation.

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Current Litigation

Lawsuits to protect giant sequoia groves

Giant sequoia groves are currently under siege from harmful industrial forestry projects, including logging for lumber and dirty biomass energy. Groves in areas that are supposed to be protected from intensive forest management, like National Parks, Wilderness Areas, and the Giant Sequoia National Monument, are being targeted most heavily. John Muir Project and our partner organizations have filed three lawsuits against these projects because they threaten the ecological integrity of iconic giant sequoia groves. JMP is the nation's leader, among organizations of any size, in fighting to protect giant sequoia groves from destructive industrial forest management.

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Lawsuit against massive backcountry logging project masquerading as "community protection" on Plumas National Forest, Northern CA

The Plumas National Forest signed a decision to implement a 214,000-acre logging project that heavily targets mature and old-growth forest in remote wildlands for lumber and dirty biomass energy, falsely promoting the logging as a "community protection" measure from wildfires. This, despite stacks of evidence submitted by JMP showing that this exact approach has led to large scale losses of homes and lives in recent fires.

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Lawsuit to protect communities, Bald Eagles, and California Spotted Owls from logging project in North Big Bear, San Bernardino National Forest, Southern CA

The San Bernardino National Forest signed a decision to implement a 13,000-acre tree cutting project that heavily targets mature and old-growth forest in remote wildlands, falsely promoting it as a "community protection" measure from wildfires. This, despite the fact that the Forest Service's own report found that this same approach, when previously implemented on the same national forest, was associated with the loss of 199 homes to wildfire.

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Pine Mountain, Los Padres National Forest, Chad Hanson © 2022

Lawsuit to stop destructive logging project on Pine Mountain in Southern CA

The Los Padres National Forest signed a decision to log several hundred acres of old-growth forest on Pine Mountain, including a Roadless Area, Spotted Owl territories, and Chumash sacred sites. JMP joined a lawsuit led by Los Padres ForestWatch to stop this logging project.

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Log Trucks leaving Yosemite Valley, Doug Bevington © 2022

Lawsuit against logging in Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park starts unprecedented commercial logging program, selling thousands of mature trees within the Park to logging companies. In the process of doing so the Park failed to notify the public, allow public comments, or conduct environmental analysis. John Muir Project is challenging this logging in federal court.

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Lawsuit Against Yosemite National Park for Failure to Comply with FOIA

Yosemite National Park refuses to provide basic documents and information regarding their commercial logging program, including the locations of endangered Pacific fishers and the impacts of the logging on them, as well as correspondence by Park staff related to the planning and implementation of the logging projects - John Muir Project sues under Freedom of Information Act.

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Photo by Maria Shayna on Unsplash

Assisting on Lawsuit against Destructive Logging of Coast Redwood Forest on Private Land

Assisting forest protectors from Friends of the South Fork Gualala, JMP director Dr. Chad Hanson wrote a declaration that helped preliminarily halt the logging of mature coast redwoods on private lands on the North Coast of California.

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