Ashland, OR – In the latest battle in a contentious fight over a plan to expand southwestern Oregon’s Mt. Ashland ski area, attorneys representing the U.S. Forest Service have asked a federal court to lift the injunction preventing the start of construction.

Attorneys representing the Forest Service filed a motion on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Medford, Ore., indicating that they have conducted new environmental studies on the impact the ski area’s 71-acre expansion, set to include two new lifts, will have upon old growth forest used as habitat for the Pacific fisher. Opponents initially got the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to issue the injunction on the basis that the Forest Service’s earlier environmental analysis, used to grant final approval to the project last May, was flawed.

A spokesperson for the Rogue Group Sierra Club says that they’ll ask the court to leave the injunction in place by arguing that the Forest Service still needs to examine new issues that they’ve identified regarding the project, including its effect on global warming and its economic feasibility.

The new terrain to be accessed is largely of a novice and intermediate pitch in Middle Fork in the western portion of the resort’s Special Use Permit area. In addition to the new lifts and trails, the approved plan calls for three new buildings, an expanded parking lot and a  snow tubing area. Once built the ski area’s overall vertical drop would increase from 1,150 feet to approximately 1,700 feet. Proponents believe that the improvements will add at least 20,000 skier visits annually to the resort’s tally and help turn the mountain’s recent yearly deficits into an operating profit.

Ski area officials say that if the injunction is lifted they’ll launch a fundraising effort to bankroll the expansion plans.