Garberville, CA. The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) and seventeen other environmental and conservation organizations from across the nation filed suit yesterday against two sets of regulations issued by the United States Forest Service earlier this month as parts of the Bush Administration's deceptively-named "Healthy Forests Initiative."

"The Bush Administration is trying to use our National Forests as scapegoats for people's fear of forest fires. However, gutting environmental laws and eliminating public participation in the management of the public's lands will mean there are less checks in place to keep big, fire resistant trees from getting logged by the timber industry, who typically leave behind a tinder box of logging slash and small diameter material that is the real threat in a forest fire," said Christine Ambrose with the Environmental Protection Information Center. "By lying to the public about the past mismanagement that has caused unhealthy forest conditions, the Bush Administration hopes to fool people into allowing the timber industry to plunder our public forests. We intend to keep our National Forests independent of partisan political paybacks, keep the public in our public lands, and keep the valuable fire resistant trees on the landscape."

"The Administration knows that there are legal and scientifically-sound ways to reduce fire hazards and to improve the health of our forests," said Ray Vaughan, Executive Director of WildLaw and lead attorney for the case. "But instead, they want to use the situation to scare and scam people into letting the large, healthy and fire-resistant trees be logged without laws or good science, all to benefit a handful of multi-national corporate special interests."

"The American people want their public forests protected and managed wisely, not clearcut and looted for private profit through this Horizontal Forests Initiative," said Lamar Marshall of Wild South. "If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he would kick Bush's butt for this outrageous and cowardly attack on our lands and our democracy. Government can lie to the people only so long before the truth comes out and wins the day."

The "Healthy Forests Initiative" (HFI)

This Administration initiative unveiled in August 2002 would rollback environmental protections and public involvement by abolishing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements on fuel reduction and "forest health" projects. In addition, the plan would make permanent changes in forest regulations to abolish citizen appeals and to provide unlimited goods for services stewardship contracts that encourage logging.
The Administration's intention is to pay for this program through increased logging, including logging of old growth forests.

Citizen Rights Eliminated

On June 4, 2003, the Administration issued new regulations to gut prior regulations that were adopted in 1993 to implement the Appeals Reform Act. It is important to note that the appeal regulations apply to all types of land management activities -- such as mining, grazing, and recreational uses -- not just to logging activities covered by the Healthy Forests Initiative. Most logging projects will be entirely exempt from appeal. Citizens' rights to comment on and appeal projects are greatly curtailed. The 1993 regulations allowed citizens to appeal all types of timber sales, including those that were categorically excluded from National Environmental Policy Act documentation requirements. The new regulations, on the other hand, exempt all categorically excluded projects from appeal. This exemption will cover many logging projects up to 1,000 acres in size, since the Forest Service the same week also issued regulations creating a new categorical exclusion for "hazardous fuels reduction projects" of up to 1,000 acres (see below).

Categorical Exclusions Open New Loopholes for Logging

On June 5, 2003, the Administration issued a rule change for the use of categorical exclusions (CEs) on National Forest lands for "hazardous fuels" projects. When a CE is used, it means that the agency does NO environmental analysis of the impacts of its proposed projects. The CE can be used for mechanical hazardous fuels reduction projects (e.g. logging) up to 1,000 acres in size and for prescribed burning projects up to 4,500 acres. The 1,000-acre size limit for logging projects is very large. By comparison, in the late 1980s, the Forest Service limited the size of categorically excluded timber sales to 10 acres. This directive opens the door for an irresponsible logging program that would ignore environmental impacts and public opposition to harmful projects.

EPIC's Lawsuit

EPIC and 17 other organizations from all over the nation are suing over the two new sets of regulations, the appeals rules and the "fuels" CE rules. The lawsuit is also designed to amend in later claims over two other sets of regulations the Administration will issue in coming months: (1) another set of CE rules to eliminate all environmental review for all green tree timber sales of up to 50 acres and all "salvage" sales up to 250 acres, and (2) a set of rules that get rid of the use of science and completely gut the wildlife protections in the planning process that develops the management plans for all the National Forests. This lawsuit challenges the lack of environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act for these new regulations (they did none) and has a facial challenge to the new rules' compliance with the National Forest Management Act and the Appeals Reform Act.

Plaintiff Organizations:

Environmental Protection Information Center (California)
WildLaw (Alabama)
Wild South (Alabama)
Wild Alabama (Alabama)
Save America's Forests (DC)
Save Our Big Scrub (Florida)
Superior Wilderness Action Network (Minnesota)
Utah Environmental Congress (Utah)
Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project (North Carolina)
Appalachian Voices (North Carolina)
Virginia Forest Watch (Virginia)
Shenandoah Ecosystems Defense Group (Virginia)
Idaho Sporting Congress (Idaho)
Alabama Environmental Council (Alabama)
Forest Guardians (New Mexico)
Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition (North Carolina)
Cherokee Forest Voices (Tennessee)
South Carolina Forest Watch (South Carolina)