Earthrise Alum Jesse Buss Makes Our Arguments to Save Walton Lake’s Old Growth Forest Before the Ninth Circuit

Jesse Buss snaps a selfie of himself with co-counsel Tom Buchele and Bridgett Chevallier outside of Nakamura Courthouse in Seattle.

Earthrise and Jesse Buss, representing the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, have been working to save the Walton Lake old growth firs since 2015. We successfully obtained preliminary injunctions against the proposed logging in 2016 and 2020. However, quite unexpectedly, in September of 2022, the district court judge abruptly reversed himself, denied all but one of our claims when ruling on the parties’ summary judgment motion, and then initially indicated he would dissolve the 2020 injunction that barred any logging of large trees. We were able to convince the district court to leave the existing injunction in place long enough for us to seek emergency relief from the Ninth Circuit. In October, the appellate court granted us a stay of the district court’s order dissolving the injunction until it could fully consider the merits of our claims. We hope for a ruling this year.