By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI

Capital Press

Environmental groups have failed to persuade a federal judge to shut down the harvest of burned logs on national forest land near Lake Tahoe in California.

The U.S. Forest Service planned to remove burned trees from about 1,400 acres as part of the Angora Fire Restoration Project after a 2007 human-caused fire scorched more than 3,000 acres in the region.

The goal was to harvest hazardous trees and those that could serve as fuel for future fires, but the project was opposed by the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The groups alleged that reducing snags in the forest would harm the habitat of the black-backed woodpecker, a "management indicator species" that's used to measure overall ecological health.

The agency violated environmental laws by not ensuring the species' viability in the region and by failing to sufficiently study alternatives to the logging project, according to the groups.

According to the Forest Service, the project represented just a tiny fraction of the total burned acreage within the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Snag habitat would also be retained in several areas within the project zone, the agency said.

U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell ruled on July 13 that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated the agency violated forest management and environmental laws.