Judge blocks a type of timber sale BENTON, Ill. (AP) - A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Forest Service to halt a type of timber sale that the agency had exempted from environmental impact reviews. Judge J. Phil Gilbert's injunction, filed Sept. 28 in a lawsuit brought by an environmental group called Heartwood and two of its Illinois members, affects timber sales nationwide under what is known as a "categorical exclusion." The exclusion is used frequently by the Forest Service to allow timber companies to log up to 250,000 board-feet of live timber or up to 1 million board-feet of dead timber without the agency first completing various environmental reviews. See full story <http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2561521229-ef5>
