Environmental Advocacy Clinic Files Challenge to Latest Major Logging Project in New Hampshire’s White Mountains

The detailed objection describes how the Lost River logging project, if approved, would violate federal laws requiring the Forest Service to protect endangered species, consider alternatives and meaningfully include the public in decision making. As proposed, the Project threatens significant impacts to a range of resources including water quality, soil, scenery, threatened and endangered species, carbon storage and the health of the forest itself.

“The Lost River logging project is a shocking preview of the future that this administration envisions for our treasured National Forests. With 200 acres of clearcuts and nearly one thousand acres of logging within critically important Inventoried Roadless Areas at the headwaters of the Pemigewasset-Merrimack River system, this is a project that serves anyone but the public,” said Zack Porter, executive director of Standing Trees. “We demand better from the federal government for our public lands and for our communities downstream.”

During earlier comment periods, the Forest Service heard a litany of concerns from hundreds of members of the public about water resources, fire risk, roadless areas, transportation effects, wildlife effects, climate change, and scenic and recreation impacts. The objection process is the final period for the public to comment on the Lost River Project.

“Even the Forest Service recognizes that logging this area as envisioned will emit about 72,123 metric tons of carbon,” said Jerry Curran, chair of the New Hampshire Sierra Club’s Public Lands Committee and resident of Conway, New Hampshire. “That’s equivalent to the emissions, on average, of over 15,000 homes’ electricity use for one year. We value our public lands for the wildlife homes they provide; the local recreation economy; the mental and physical wellness opportunities; and the unnamed and varied ‘many uses’ of the limited resource we call the White Mountain National Forest.”

In detailing how the U.S. Forest Service’s plans fail to comply with the National Forest Management Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and Administrative Procedure Act, the objection asserts how the Forest Service’s draft decision:

• Authorizes logging for this project that would exceed what is permitted under the White Mountain Forest Plan’s scenic standards. This will leave large holes in old and mature forests visible for decades from beloved White Mountain peaks including Mount Moosilauke, Loon Mountain, Mount Lincoln and Mount Tecumseh.
• Ignores the cumulative impacts of the Lost River Project in conjunction with more than a dozen other proposed, ongoing or recently completed commercial timber harvest projects in the White Mountain National Forest — something the Forest Service is legally obligated to study and account for in its decisions. Collectively, these projects will have significant impacts on the health of forests, significantly reduce water quality and quantity, and disrupt and fragment large swaths of habitat for fish and wildlife that depend on old forests — a habitat that is in alarmingly short supply across New England.
• Relies on outdated science as it relates to forest health, ignoring the remarkable old and mature forest ecosystems of the Northeast, and the important role the White Mountain National Forest can play on the global scale with climate stabilization and resilience.
• Harms threatened and endangered species. The project is likely to adversely affect the northern long eared bat, a federally listed endangered species which depends on old and mature forests like the ones targeted here and has a known hibernaculum located just outside the project area. The Forest Service acknowledges project activities will take place during the bat’s summer maternity season when logging “present[s] the greatest potential for injury and death.”

The objection requests that the Forest Service drop the Project altogether, correct the errors in its Final Environmental Assessment, or prepare an Environmental Impact Statement. The Project is a significant threat to the Lost River region of the White Mountain National Forest, with impacts that will ripple throughout the entire National Forest and downstream communities.

This filing builds on the clinic’s concerted advocacy with Standing Trees against the White Mountain National Forest’s unlawful approvals of other recent commercial logging projects, including its pending lawsuits seeking reconsideration of the Tarleton and Peabody West projects and of the Sandwich project.

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Fall 2025 Environmental Advocacy Clinic student attorneys Joe Anderson, Blythe Faris, Lakshita Dey, Eric Grimes and Julia Wickham authored the clinic’s objection, with support from Director Christophe Courchesne.

Vermont Law and Graduate School, a private, independent institution, is home to a law school that offers ABA-accredited residential and online hybrid JD programs and a graduate school that offers master’s degrees and certificates in multiple disciplines, including programs offered by the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment, the Center for Justice Reform and other graduate-level programs emphasizing the intersection of environmental justice, social justice and public policy. Both the law and graduate schools strongly feature experiential clinical and field work learning. For more information, visit vermontlaw.edu, Facebook and Instagram.

Standing Trees is a grassroots membership organization that works to protect and restore New England’s forests for the benefit of the climate, clean water and biodiversity, with a focus on state and federal public lands in New Hampshire and Vermont. Standing Trees members regularly visit and recreate throughout the White Mountain National Forest. For more information, visit standingtrees.org, or connect on Facebook and Instagram.