Current work in wildlife, rivers, public lands, and climate

In an attempt to avoid its duty to analyze the impacts of the projects’ extensive commercial logging, the Forest Service relied on a categorical exclusion (CE)—an agency regulation exempting certain projects from the usual NEPA public disclosure and administrative appeal requirements. CEs are reserved for small, routine activities that the agency has previously concluded have only insignificant environmental impacts, such as replacing culverts or rebuilding sections of trail. For the three Fremont-Winema projects, the Forest Service relied on CE-6, a categorical exclusion for timber stand and wildlife habitat improvement activities such as tree thinning, brush control, and prescribed burning. Though the agency adopted CE-6 in 1992, it wasn’t until the Trump administration issued a 2018  executive order directing the agency to speed up approval of timber projects that the Forest Service began using CE-6 to bypass environmental analyses for projects that included commercial logging.

“The Forest Service is glossing over the impact of these projects by labeling them as wildlife habitat or timber stand improvement projects. CE-6 wasn’t intended for projects of this scale, no matter the claimed underlying purpose,” said Chris Krupp, public lands attorney with WildEarth Guardians. “The Forest Service is simply looking to get out of its responsibility and shortcut its analysis.”

The three projects challenged in the lawsuit indicate the agency’s intention to increasingly rely on CE-6 for projects that employ large-scale commercial logging. The South Warner project authorizes 16,000 acres of commercial thinning (25 square miles), Bear Wallow authorizes 10,000 acres (15+ square miles) and Baby Bear greenlights 3,000 acres (4+ square miles).

“The impacts of logging at the scale of these projects are intricate and extensive,” said Krupp. “There’s a reason Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act—to make sure that federal agencies look at effects before they leap into a proposed action.”

The lawsuit further alleges the Forest Service has never determined that commercial thinning—much less commercial thinning of the scale and scope authorized by the three projects here – does not cause significant environmental impacts. Such a determination is necessary if projects that include commercial thinning are to be categorically excluded from NEPA’s mandate to disclose the environmental impacts of an agency proposal through either an assessment or more comprehensive impact statement. 

Fremont-Winema National Forest.
Photo: WildEarth Guardians

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