Ill-named legislation that would take a wrecking ball to the public’s involvement in management of our public forests has recently moved through the House of Representatives, and is now under consideration in the Senate.
The “Fix Our Forests Act” was rather cynically jammed through Congress in reaction to the devastating Los Angeles fires, which were ignited on suburban chapparal shrublands far from any national forests. The intent of the legislation is to accelerate approvals of logging projects on national forests by waiving requirements for environmental analysis and any associated public participation in those projects.
At its core, the Fix Our Forests Act allows for logging projects up to 10,000 acres to be quickly approved without conforming to the public review requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA is the classic “look before you leap” legislation that directs federal agencies like the Forest Service to consider various alternatives to accomplish an intended outcome. It also requires agencies to invite the public’s review and feedback on those alternatives.
The new law would strike those requirements for environmental review and public participation under the guise of streamlining projects to remove vegetation and reduce wildfire risk. While all can agree on the need to reduce wildfire risks near homes and communities, excluding the public from those discussions can create more problems than they solve.
For example, the Forest Service might propose a project with a narrow perspective of fuel reduction without considering the broader impacts. Here in southwest Colorado, the public has raised concerns on past projects, such as what about the impacts of new roads and logging on popular mountain biking trail systems. Or what about the impacts of logging truck traffic down Main Street in nearby communities. Or is it possible to avoid impacts along cliffs important for nesting raptors.
Because of NEPA, the Forest Service had to consider and respond to these community concerns. In many cases, agency managers took steps to mitigate those concerns, and ended up with projects more widely supported that still accomplished the objectives of wildfire risk reduction.
Under the misguided Fix Our Forests Act, the public would be excluded from the ability to raise any of these concerns. At best, the public’s only recourse could be to file lawsuits in an attempt to get the agency’s attention.
The legislation also minimizes the need for the Forest Service to comply with the Endangered Species Act, a fundamental bedrock environmental law that protects wildlife and habitat valued by the public. If, for example, a species was newly found to exist within a project area, the agency would not need to consider that information in its project implementation.
As passed by the House, the Fix Our Forests Act takes a sledgehammer to the public’s involvement in public lands management. The bill’s basic premise is to “categorically exclude” from environmental analysis and public review projects up to 10,000 acres, which is more than 15 square miles in size. For comparison, Purgatory’s permitted area is 2,300 acres, so imagine logging projects spanning a forest ecosystem five times the size of the entire Purgatory resort boundary as immune to environmental analysis.
Colorado’s Sen. John Hickenlooper has expressed an interest to address these problems as the legislation moves to the Senate. The Fix Our Forests Act is indicative of the destructive approach to government currently in vogue. It would leave all public lands users grasping at straws when it comes to local involvement in management of our backyard forests. Sen. Hickenlooper’s office can be contacted at https://www.hickenlooper.senate.gov/email-john/.
Mark Pearson is Executive Director at San Juan Citizens Alliance. Reach him at mark @sanjuancitizens.org.
