GRANTS PASS, Ore. – A federal judge who threw out the Bush administration’s new rules for logging in roadless areas of national forests has refused to halt a timber harvest resulting from the 2002 Biscuit fire.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth LaPorte in San Francisco ruled Tuesday there was no clear precedent for stopping a timber sale that was approved prior to her ruling and that Silver Creek Timber Co. of Merlin, Ore., would suffer serious economic harm if it could not finish harvesting the Blackberry timber sale in the North Kalmiopsis roadless area of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

The Biscuit fire burned in 500,000 acres of southwestern Oregon and became the focus of political and legal battles among conservation groups, the Bush administration and the timber industry over logging burned trees.