{"id":2468355,"date":"2019-08-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/us-forest-service-public-commenting\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T13:12:55","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T19:12:55","slug":"us-forest-service-public-commenting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/us-forest-service-public-commenting\/","title":{"rendered":"Speak Up Now to Save Our National Forests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: <\/em>the comment period<\/a> has been extended until August 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is quietly trying to strip public input from the decision-making process used by the U.S. Forest Service. Doing so would mean that logging companies could clear-cut at many as 4,200 acres at a time, and you wouldn\u2019t know about it until you turned up at your favorite spot to find it decimated. But you have one last chance to stop that from happening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a speak-now-or-forever-lose-your-ability-to-have-input situation,\u201d says Sam Evans, a senior attorney with\u00a0the Southern Environmental Law Center<\/a>\u00a0(SELC). The\u00a0organization has put together an easy tool<\/a> that will enable you to participate in what\u2019s potentially the last public-comment period about the vast majority of decisions affecting national forests. If the public doesn\u2019t speak up now and stop this proposed logging rule from going forward, it\u00a0won\u2019t have a chance to weigh in when logging, roads, or even pipelines threaten\u00a0the lands where they recreate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Way back in 1969, Richard Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act<\/a>, which requires\u00a0all federal agencies to begin considering the environmental impacts of any projects they undertake. Part of that is a requirement to solicit public input and look for less impactful alternatives. NEPA is one of the mechanisms that makes federal management of public lands so much more robust and democratic than state management<\/a>. Everyone with a stake in national-forest management, including local users, has a right to comment. And the agency is supposed to be accountable to those people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NEPA\u00a0quickly became an invaluable tool for the Forest Service, enabling it to make decisions with much more data than it could ever have compiled\u00a0through its staff alone. As evidenced by the stories contained in the over 2,600 comments<\/a> left on the proposed rule so far, public comment has enabled the Forest Service\u00a0to better serve its multiple-use mandate<\/a>, balancing the needs of logging with conservation and recreation. This is one of those processes where everyone wins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the U.S. Forest Service is chronically underfunded and understaffed\u2014and that was before it became overwhelmed with firefighting costs (which currently\u00a0account for about half of the agency\u2019s total expenses). As a result, the Forest Service\u2019s decision-making process has slowed to a crawl. During the fiscal years 2014 through 2018, the average time it took the agency to conduct the environmental assessments dictated by NEPA was 687 days<\/a>. So\u00a0the Forest Service started looking for loopholes that would allow it to circumvent the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This culminated in an executive order that President Trump signed last year<\/a>, ordering\u00a0the Forest Service to use\u00a0\u201cAll applicable categorical exclusions set forth in law or regulation for fire management, restoration, and other management projects in forests, rangelands, and other Federal lands when implementing the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.\u201d The order also instructs the Forest Service to create new categorical exclusions (CEs) to increase its timber outputs. And that\u2019s exactly what it\u2019s doing with this proposed rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As evidenced by the administration\u2019s proposed 2020 budget for the Forest Service<\/a>, it\u2019s not actually all that interested in addressing wildfire. That same proposal\u00a0slashes the total Forest Service\u00a0budget by $815 million\u00a0and reduces its firefighting budget by $530 million. The real impact of the executive mandate was to order the Forest Service to find or create CEs it could apply to those other management projects\u2014pretty much any project the agency might want to undertake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is part of the Trump administration\u2019s agenda to be aggressive with deregulation,\u201d says the SELC\u2019s Evans. \u201cCouched in the language of firefighting, the executive order is actually telling the Forest Service to expand its production of timber<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it turns out there\u2019s one hell of a CE\u00a0included in this proposed rule. If it\u2019s finalized, commercial timber-harvest activities not in excess of 4,200 acres<\/a> won\u2019t require an environmental analysis anymore.\u00a0In the past, any harvest greater than 70 acres required that analysis. Every single harvest has required both public notice and comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure you can see the problem there. Forty-two hundred\u00a0acres is\u00a0a very large area\u2014more than 6.5 square miles. And projects of that size could be stacked near one another, effectively creating a larger impacted zone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So in summary: the proposed rule would allow the Forest Service to green-light the clear-cutting of 6.5 square miles of old-growth forest without conducting an environmental analysis,\u00a0soliciting public input, or notifying the public ahead of time. The proposed rule would allow the Forest Service to construct roads through that 6.5-square-mile area without an environmental analysis,\u00a0soliciting public input, or notifying the public. It\u00a0could do the same with pipelines. Heck, as long as a single project doesn\u2019t exceed 6.5 square miles, the Forest Service will pretty much be able to do whatever it wants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNational-forest users\u2014hikers, bikers, and wildlife watchers\u2014won\u2019t know what\u2019s coming until the logging trucks show up at their favorite trailheads or until roads and trails are closed,\u201d says Evans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But you do have one last chance to demand that your voice is\u00a0heard. You can find the proposed rule\u2019s comment page here<\/a>, or use the SELC\u2019s simple commenting tool here<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cOur public lands can\u2019t be protected without transparency and accountability, and that\u2019s what the Forest Service is proposing to eliminate,\u201d says Evans. Let\u2019s stop them from doing that.<\/p>\n

You have until August 12\u00a0to comment<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration is quietly trying to strip public input from the decision-making process used by the U.S. Forest Service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19011,"featured_media":2400591,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"uuid":"35b038d33feae7188bc7a04c1c544aff","footnotes":""},"categories":[2547],"tags":[2805,2699,2816,2783,2782],"byline":[1596],"ad_cat":[],"legacy-category":[],"class_list":["post-2468355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-conservation","tag-indefinitely-wild","tag-law","tag-public-lands","tag-usfs","cluster-indefinitely-wild","byline-wes-siler"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Speak Up Now to Save Our National Forests","url":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/us-forest-service-public-commenting\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/us-forest-service-public-commenting\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/05\/usfs-rule_h.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/05\/usfs-rule_h.jpg"},"articleSection":"Environment","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"wsiler"}],"creator":["wsiler"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online","logo":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/favicon-194x194-1.png"},"keywords":["conservation","indefinitely wild","law","public lands","usfs"],"dateCreated":"2019-08-06T00:00:00Z","datePublished":"2019-08-06T00:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-05-12T19:12:55Z"},"rendered":"