The United States Forest Service has postponed plans to thin the trees around the Lake Tahoe area in the Sierra Nevada mountains -- and thereby cut down the risk of wildfires -- because the effort could further threaten a local and newly-designated endangered frog.

According to a report in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, forest officials have stopped the forest density reduction project until they can consult with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, which they were directed to do by a federal court, and determine if the their attempts to stave off wildfires could cause harm to endangered mountain yellow-legged frogs, also known as Rana muscosa, which reside in the mountains of Southern California northward to the southern Sierra Nevada mountains, in the middle of which Lake Tahoe is located.

The government has designated critical habitat for the frog on land in the Upper Echo Lakes, where officials have been burning or taking away trees to reduce the chance of wildfires.

Dennis Murphy, the biologist from the University of Nevada who filed the lawsuit that started the case, said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press that the Forest Service "put on blinders to the impacts of the project hoping no one would notice."

Murphy as well has accused forest officials of not adequately studying how the tree-burning may greatly affect the frog species -- which the National Park Service noted was once the "most abundant amphibian in the high mountain lakes of the Sierra Nevada," said the Daily Tribune.

"Certainly, it is welcome news that they were able to stop the project and address the issue with the project impacts with the Fish and Wildlife Service," Paul Weiland, Murphy's lawyer, said about the decision.

The Forest Service had completed about 40 percent of the tree thinning before it was halted.