In the 1957 Dr. Seuss classic, when the Grinch steals everything needed for the Who-ville Christmas celebration, the final insult is the tree. “And he stuffed all the food up the chimney with glee, and now, grinned the Grinch, I’ll stuff up the tree!”
This year’s Grinch may be a federal district judge named Raner Collins. His ruling in a Wild Earth Guardians case about Mexican spotted owls threatens to steal not just any Christmas tree, but THE Christmas tree from the front lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
Providing the Capitol Christmas tree is a great honor, traded each year among various states, and this year it’s New Mexico’s turn. A giant tree was selected from the Questa Ranger District of the Carson National Forest, to be shipped to DC in time for the festivities, including a tree-lighting ceremony that attracts thousands of visitors. The selection is a big deal for New Mexico. At the same time, seventy smaller companion trees also get shipped to DC to decorate other government buildings.
As is the practice each year in the winning state, the Forest Service sponsored various events around New Mexico, having special ornaments made for the Capitol tree. The legislature passed a resolution expressing the State’s pride, and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is sponsoring a statewide fourth-grade essay contest, with the winner getting a trip to Washington for the big ceremony.
Unrelated to all this merriment, Wild Earth Guardians has waged a multi-year battle to stop all tree cutting on all national forests. The latest in their string of lawsuits sought to stop logging in areas said to be habitat for the Mexican Spotted Owl. On September 11, Judge Collins, a Clinton appointee who is now senior judge for the District of Arizona, agreed. He ordered a complete halt to all cutting of all wood for all purposes on all five national forests in New Mexico, and one in Arizona, because the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service have not “fulfilled their responsibility to protect and improve habitats for the federally listed Mexican spotted owl.”
The ruling put an abrupt and indefinite halt, not only to commercial logging and timber sales, but also firewood cutting permits, and even tree thinning and prescribed fires for healthy forest restoration projects. There was no mention of the U.S. Capitol Christmas tree or the seventy companion trees, which would be cut by the Forest Service itself. Many residents immediately expressed dire concern over the impact on a number of jobs and livelihoods.
In response to local outrage about the importance of firewood to area residents, Wild Earth Guardians assured everyone that was not its intention, and asked the judge to make an exception for fuelwood people cut “for personal use.” But that does not solve the problem, since many people help cut firewood for their friends and neighbors, and some make part of their living doing so. One man, Scott Johnston, spends weekends cutting fuelwood for more than 35 customers in several counties. “I cut for a lot of people who can’t cut their own wood, and that’s their main source of heat – that’s my family’s only source of heat,” he told the local newspaper. His customers buy the permits, and he cuts the wood for them, he said. “I don’t know what they’ll do – I’ve only got about two or three cords right now, and a lot of people haven’t stocked up.”
That was never the intent of the lawsuit. It was another attack on the timber industry, not individuals. Such misunderstanding is precisely the reason the Administration has proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act, under which enforcement would be more flexible for species listed as “threatened” (including the spotted owl) but not “endangered.” Yet that distinction and its impact on local jobs clearly does not concern New Mexico state officials, who filed suit to prevent the proposed changes (as did Colorado).
Predictably, the judge couldn’t handle the bad publicity, so this week he granted the motion to exempt firewood cutting, “for personal use.” He also demanded that the government negotiate a settlement – not with the courts, but with Wild Earth Guardians.
The Forest Service had not even asked whether they could still cut the Capitol Christmas tree. Bureaucrats tend to assume such rulings do not apply to them. But this ruling clearly did apply. Thus, holiday revelers were already asking, as little Cindy Lou Who asked the Grinch, “Santy Claus, why? Why are you taking our Christmas tree, why?”
The judge later entered a quiet amendment to his order, exempting the Forest Service’s Christmas tree project. Naturally. The Grinch would never steal his own Christmas.
This column originally appeared in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel October 4, 2019.
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