PISGAH NATIONAL FOREST (828newsNOW) — Environmental nonprofit group MountainTrue and the Center for Biological Diversity have filed a joint lawsuit against the United States Forest Service for what they call illegal logging in the Nolichucky River Gorge.
In a Nov. 6 letter to their supporters, MountainTrue laid out elements of their case agains the Forest Service. According to the nonprofit, the Forest Service has begun a logging project in Nolichucky Gorge, part of the Pisgah National Forest, under the “guise of a long-expired emergency order.”
“The Forest Service is pushing ahead under the guise of a long-expired emergency order — and doing so without informing the public, completing required environmental review, or consulting with state and federal experts,” the nonprofit wrote. “The project was so secretive that we wouldn’t even have known this part of Pisgah National Forest was being logged without being informed by local residents.”
Supposedly for salvage
Josh Kelly, Resilient Forests Program Director at MountainTrue, said that the project has been executed as part of an old salvage logging operation. Salvage logging, the process of removing dead or downed trees from a forest area, has been a common process following destruction caused by Hurricane Helene in September 2024…