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.

“The Forest Service says that it conforms with a salvage logging disaster declaration that expired May 25,” Kelly said. “They were supposed to have all areas under contract by May 25. This area came under contract sometime in September, best as we know, as a direct sale to a timber company.”

MountainTrue said that they are predominantly concerned with the lack of transparency from the government agency.

“The worst version of this project happens where they log healthy trees inside of the back country area and the designated old growth patch. It basically signals to the public that the Forest plan is meaningless and that the Forest Service will do what they want to do with impunity, regardless of what they said they were going to do in the public Forest plan or what the public wants,” Kelly explained. “In the most charitable reading, the Forest Service is trying to act quickly in a time when they’ve lost a lot of staff, when there’s a government shutdown, and there’s a lot of constraints on what they can and can’t do.”

The environmental impact

Kelly said that there are also the environmental consequences to consider.

“Right below the site, there are endangered Appalachian elktoe muscles, and hellbenders and a huge diversity of aquatic wildlife. There are also half a dozen rare plants known from the area,” Kelly said. “As far as we know, there have been no surveys done, so there could be a lot of damage to rare species, as well as erosion that damages wildlife habitat in the river.”

In an effort to halt the logging operation, MountainTrue and CBD have filed a temporary restraining order, citing a refusal from the Forest Service to meet with either organization.

“We filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, which is essentially asking the court to just hit pause on this project to give us time to hash out the legal issues, and stop logs being taken out of the forest and roads being built, harming all of these incredible ecological and scenic values in this place that people care so much about,” explained Clara Derby, an associate attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, an environmental legal advocacy organization representing MountainTrue and CBD.

828newsNOW have reached out to the Pisgah National Forest and the U.S. Forest Service for comment.

This story is developing.