A renowned conservation biologist who has done research for the Forest Service for more than a decade is suing the agency to try to block logging in the Sierra Nevada mountains above Lake Tahoe. He says it’s being done illegally under the guise of reducing wildfire threats that don’t exist.

Dennis Murphy, a Pew Scholar research professor in biology at the University of Nevada, Reno, says the Forest Service is ignoring its own analysis of the low fire risk in the high-altitude, old-growth forest on about 100 acres surrounding Echo Lakes, about 8 miles southwest of South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

“Cutting activities on the Pacific Crest Trail/Tahoe Rim Trail in the scenic Lake Tahoe Basin are occurring where no material threat of wildfire exists at all,” said Murphy, whose family has owned a cabin for three generations in the area on the edge of the Desolation Wilderness high atop the Sierra Nevada.

The logging threatens the survival of the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed be listed as an endangered species, said Murphy, past president of the Society of Conservation Biology.

The project is within the area the agency proposed in April for designation as habitat critical to the frog, he said. “In its zeal to implement the project, the Forest Service has disregarded these facts and is violating the mandatory procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act by blazing ahead,” according to his lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento on Nov. 6.

From NBC Bay Area: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/professor-Sues-to-Block-Sierra-Nevada-Logging-232346801.html