A federal judge in southern Illinois issued an order Monday halting a logging project commissioned by the U.S. Forest Service in Shawnee National Forest for violating federal law.
The action comes as part of a federal lawsuit filed by the Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists (RACE) and Friends of Bell Smith Springs in response to a roughly 70-acre logging project announced in 2024.
According to a release issued by the groups, the Forest Service proposed the project as a restoration effort for oak and hickory trees in an area adjacent to Hunting Branch, a stream within Shawnee National Forest that flows into Bell Smith Springs Canyon. The lawsuit centers around the claim that the federal agency violated the Endangered Species Act when it approved the project before receiving an opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services on how logging operations could affect the endangered species of Indiana Bat that inhabited the area.
Under federal law, agencies like the Forest Service must undergo an ESA Section 7 consultation when authorizing projects that could harm the existence of any species that’s considered endangered or threatened. Through this process, Fish and Wildlife officials issue what’s known as a biological opinion, a document which assesses the possible impact on the species that reside in proposed areas.
Mark Donham is a member of RACE. He said through public records requests, the groups found documents that he said indicated that the Forest Service knowingly approved the project weeks before the required consultation was completed.
“What we argued in court [was] that they can't come in after the fact and try to do this [Fish and Wildlife] consultation and then have it retroactively applied to a decision they made months before, because that's not what the law says,” Donham said.
The logging project had been underway for eight days in August 2025 before a judge issued a two-week restraining order in response to the lawsuit brought by the environmentalist groups. The contractor had logged around 40 acres worth of timber before work was temporarily ordered to stop.
However, according to legal documents, the project has sat dormant since the order that stopped logging activity for two weeks was issued last year – leaving the already harvested wood on site. Of the wood that was already logged, the environmentalist groups claim primarily oak and hickory trees were cut – the types of trees the Forest Service had said it was trying to restore through this project.
In defense against claims of violating federal law, the Forest Service argued there are no legal statutes requiring a biological opinion to be completed before a project is authorized. However, in her final order, Judge Nancy Rosenstengel said case law indicates agencies need that assessment from Fish and Wildlife Services before they can approve actions potentially impacting endangered species.
In response, attorneys for the Forest Service claimed that even if the department did violate the ESA, the court should not shutter the project because more damage would be caused if the site is left dormant than if it were allowed to continue. Rosenstengel refuted that, writing that the project had already been dormant for over a year since neither the government nor contractors continued logging the site after the 2025 temporary restraining order expired.
Rosenstengel’s order vacates the Forest Service’s 2024 approval of the southern Illinois logging project.
"We are grateful that the judge took it upon herself to dig into environmental law and issue this ruling,” said Sam Stearns, founder and president of Friends of Bell Smith Springs, in a press release. “She was clearly unpersuaded by Forest Service arguments which torture logic and defy law."
Donham said he sees the decision as a positive outcome for protecting regions in the national forest. However, he said there is still a possibility that the Forest Service could repeat the approval process for the project.
“They [could] go back and redo the whole process from the beginning and try to get the procedure right. You know, that's something that we'll deal with at the time,” Donham said. “I sort of doubt it because it's such a small area, and really… it's still a mystery to all of us why they were doing this. It just seemed so ill advised from the very beginning, but they were dead set on doing it.”
Donham said because of this possibility, the Forest Service hasn’t publicly announced what will happen with the remaining timber from the shuttered logging project.
