I’d no sooner opened my book of Robert Frost’s poetry to start the morning right when Neighbor J drove up. A wind had downed trees in his pasture, and he was sawing one up when his chainsaw had gotten pinched — “Can you help me get it out?” A “pinch” happens when the tree trunk suddenly sags or shifts, clamping the saw bar tight in the kerf like gigantic wooden jaws. 

A lawsuit filed last month in a Washington, D.C., federal court alleges the U.S. Forest Service’s practice of setting “timber targets” puts the climate at risk, undermines the Biden administration’s climate goals and violates federal law. 

In a newly filed lawsuit, a coalition of conservation organizations is alleging that a controversial U.S. Forest Service logging project on the Cashiers-Highlands Plateau violates federal law.