PORTLAND, Oregon — For decades, we have been inundated with propaganda from the timber industry and its allies that logging or what they euphemistically call “fuel reductions” would reduce wildfires and improve forest health. The solution was to ramp up logging by using Categorical Exclusions (CEs). A recent court decision has challenged the expanded use of CEs for massive logging projects. Oregon Wild, WildEarth Guardians, and GO Alliance sued the Forest Service in 2022, accusing it of failing to determine whether applying categorical exclusion 6 to approve large-scale logging projects was effective and had little environmental impact as required by law. The judge reasoned that leaving the CEs in place would allow the Forest Service to approve commercial thinning based on a policy that was “illegally promulgated.” …While the judge’s decision affects future Forest Service project approvals, the order doesn’t affect existing timber contracts.