Ohio Forestry Association, Inc. v. Sierra Club, et al. (523 U.S. 726)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 18, 1998 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 523 U.S. 726 · 118 S. Ct. 1665
- Decided
- May 18, 1998
- Term
- October Term 1997
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. The Sierra Club challenges the lawfulness of a federal land and resource management plan adopted by the United States Forest Service for Ohio’s Wayne National Forest on the ground that the plan permits too much logging and too much elearcutting. We conclude that the controversy is not yet ripe for judicial review. I The National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA) requires the Secretary of Agriculture to “develop, maintain, and, as appropriate, revise land and resource management plans for units of the National Forest System.” 90 Stat. 2949, as renumbered and amended, 16 U. S. C. § 1604(a). The System itself is vast. It includes 155 national forests, 20 national grasslands, 8 land utilization projects, and other lands that together occupy nearly 300,000 square miles of land located in 44 States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. § 1609(a); 36 CFR § 200.1(c)(2) (1997); Office of the Federal Register, United States Government Manual 135 (1997/1998). The National Forest Service, which manages the System, develops land and resource management plans pursuant to NFMA, and uses these forest plans to “guide all natural resource management activities,” 36 CFR § 219.1(b) (1997), including use of the land for “outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, wildlife and fish, and wilderness.” 16 U. S. C. § 1604(e)(1). In developing…
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