Well, it’s about damn time

In the past, here at RNS, we’ve noted few examples of judges ignoring all scientific evidence and siding with an environmental group to shut down cattle grazing, or what have you.

Oddly enough, it looks as though the logic and reason of like-minded citizens such as ourselves has finally won through

An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled it’s improper for federal judges to act as scientists when weighing in on disputed U.S. Forest Service timber projects.

The court said environmentalists had asked it “to act as a panel of scientists that instructs the Forest Service how to validate its hypotheses regarding wildlife viability, chooses among scientific studies in determining whether the Forest Service has complied with the underlying Forest Plan, and orders the agency to explain every possible scientific uncertainty,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr., wrote. “This is not a proper role for a federal appellate court.”

Environmental groups The Lands Council, based in Spokane, Wash., and the Wild West Institute, in Missoula, Mont., contended the Forest Service’s logging plan exceeded what was needed to restore the forest’s historic character and claimed logging would harm the region’s ecosystem for species including small, migratory owls.

So the scientists at the USFS spent taxpayer dollars to study a plan that would gauge the impact of admitting commercial logging into a burned section of the Idaho Panhandle National Forest.

These scientists came to the conclusion that logging there would not cause significant harm to the ecosystem.

The eco-socialists, not liking the scientific findings, asked the federal court system to make the USFS rethink their study. The 9th Circuit, having finally seen the error of their previous decisions in this case, told the eco-socialists to “Listen to the Scientists”, which is what they are demanding everyone do in regards to their global warming death cult beliefs, but apparently isn’t good enough advice on something as small as a burned timber sale.

This decision came down last Thursday, and it looks as though some jackass didn’t get the message.

A federal judge has overturned a decision by the U.S. Forest Service to allow oil and gas drilling near a forest and a river in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula.

U.S. District Judge David Lawson of Detroit ruled Thursday the agency had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in 2005 by giving Savoy Energy LP of Traverse City a permit to drill an exploratory well near the Au Sable River’s south branch.

The proposed wellhead would be located in the Huron-Manistee National Forest about three-tenths of a mile from the Mason Tract, a 4,679-acre wilderness area prized by anglers and other outdoor recreationists.

I wonder if someone needs to check the honorable judge Lawson’s Caebla’s Club Card to see if he buy much tackle and line?

Either way, Judge Lawson needs to remember that he wears a Black robe, and that scientists wear White coats, that, while they may be similar in cut and shape, do signify different areas of expertise.

Maybe if we let him call himself a “Law Scientist” he will let the findings of folks who have studied large amounts of actual hard science to earn the title “Biologist” alone?