It's no secret that Kristi and I have been interested in and involved in planning for the Shawnee National Forest for the last...um...let's see...28 years. In that time, we have been involved regionally with various organizations, but the one that we have been most closely associated with is the Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists, or RACE.

RACE came about when a group that we formed with some neighbors of ours circa 1983, which we called "the Association of Concerned Environmentalists" or ACE, joined up with folks in the Pomona, Illinois neighborhood, who were very concerned about clearcutting on the national forest in their neighborhood. Joe Glisson came up with the idea for RACE. He said that it showed that ACE had gone regional, and that it had another meaning - that we were in a race against time to save the forest. We all thought it was a great idea.

I've started to write the history of RACE on this blog, and I will finish it. But one of our greatest accomplishments, which I haven't written about yet, is our lawsuit in 1995-97, which successfully challenged the Shawnee's 1992 amended forest management plan.

I'm going to keep this brief, but the record clearly shows that it was RACE who was primarily responsible for this victory. Every issue raised and won in the lawsuit was an issue brought by RACE in their administrative appeal of the 1992 plan amendment. Other groups signed on, and the Sierra Club even got their name first in the caption by donating several thousand dollars to fund the costs of the litigation, (which we graciously allowed, because we knew that it had political clout). But make mistake about it - without our administrative appeal, written by our attorney, Tom Buchele, with my and Joe Glisson's and other's help, the lawsuit would not have prevailed....period.

But, in the end, when the case was won, it was "Sierra Club v. USDA," and they used the victory to raise money. I don't recall ever getting any thank you from the Sierra Club, and RACE was never credited in any of their newsletters. But that was ok...we had won and stopped a lot of bad things in our local neighborhoods.

With us working together, we had enough legal, cultural, and political power to get the judge to issue the injunction stopping commercial logging, off-road vehicles, and oil and gas development in the forest. That injunction has been in effect since 1997.

In 2006, under the Bush administration, the Shawnee issued a revised plan. It's really horrible. It makes these claims that they say are based on science, but the fact is that it was based on their hand-picked scientists. The hand-picking of their scientists was so blatant that a federal judge in Washington D.C. ruled that it violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act. This Act was passed years ago to assure that committees of non-agency people that a federal agency turned to for advice was "fairly balanced" in terms of points of view represented, and held noticed, open meetings where public involvement was required.

None of that was done. But the agency, after several meetings with the hand-picked scientists, came out with a plan which basically says that they need to log and burn tens of thousands of acres on the Shawnee to make the forest right. They never would have been able to do that if those meetings had been open to the public.

Nevertheless, all these years after the plan revision was issued, the Forest Service filed a motion with the court to lift the injunction. RACE and co-plaintiff Illinois Audubon Council, kept the original attorney, Tom Buchele, now director the environmental law clinic at Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Oregon. We filed a strong opposition to the Forest Service's motion. I never would try to guess how a court is going to rule, but I know we made strong points.

The Illinois Sierra Club did not retain Tom Buchele as their attorney. They retained Albert Ettinger, a long time environmental attorney from Chicago. Apparently the Illinois Sierra Club didn't file anything. One would be tempted to throw out the hyperbolic statements about how irresponsible and against the Sierra Club's mission not to stand up for their own injunction which is in their name and which they fund raised upon way back when. But I will resist the temptation and just stick to the facts. The facts are that they did not respond, and thus, will likely not be much of a player in this.

I don't want to speculate why this might have happened. But I have my theories. Frankly though, the Illinois Chapter of Sierra Club has bad leadership when it comes to the Shawnee. Their main person on the Shawnee has few contacts in the rural counties, and has trouble working effectively with people. This has caused a lot of problems for them. But it seems hardly a reason for the organization as a whole to suffer this kind of embarassment.

The brief that we filed is attached to this entry.