A fast-moving bill to reduce wildfire risks in national forests would give the Agriculture Department a work-around past even the bill’s modest environmental safeguards, making the measure tough to swallow for some environmentalists and Hill Democrats.
The “Fix Our Forests Act,” S. 1462, which advanced out of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee with bipartisan support earlier this month, would give the Agriculture secretary wide latitude to declare “emergency” situations on millions of acres of federal land.
The language in the bill would provide even faster forest work than the rest of the legislation envisions and offer limited opportunity for the public to object.
The legislation has built momentum and is now raising alarms among environmental groups that oppose it. The House passed a similar bill earlier this year with 60 Democrats joining Republicans on the effort.
“This administration is redefining what we call an emergency,” said Ellen Stuart Haentjens, executive director of the Virginia Wilderness Committee, a nonprofit environmental group.
The “emergency” designation is so broad, she said, it could encompass projects that have more to do with harvesting timber than preventing wildfires.
The legislation spells out a couple of scenarios for fast-tracked thinning and logging, which advocates say will help prevent the worst wildfires by depriving them of potential fuel.
First, the bill calls for bigger “categorical exclusions” from the National Environmental Policy Act — growing from 3,000 acres to 10,000 acres for some types of projects in the high-risk firesheds — and would place new limitations on legal challenges.
One new categorical exclusion in the bill would allow for quicker removal of “hazard” trees that could harm wildland firefighters, for instance. Categorical exclusions pare back NEPA reviews based on a finding that projects won’t cause environmental harm.
Then, the bill would allow the Agriculture secretary to also declare an emergency in any of those places, further speeding the process and limiting public comment. Around 250 areas in the Western U.S. already have the highest-risk designation from the Forest Service, and the bill spells out a process for adding more.
‘Inartfully drafted bill’
Fitting the pieces together has some congressional staffers and lawmakers scratching their heads, even though the measure has bipartisan sponsors in both chambers.
“It is very confusing,” said a forest policy aide to a Democratic senator who has misgivings about the bill. The aide was granted anonymity to speak openly about potential negotiations.
Among other wrinkles: Some provisions in the bill aim to counteract the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken NEPA regulations, by declaring that forest projects must comply with the environmental law. But those provisions may be open to interpretation, the aide said.
“It’s an inartfully drafted bill,” the aide said.
Responding to those concerns, a Republican aide on the House Natural Resources Committee disputed the notion that the bill shuts out the public, adding that authors sought to preserve public comment provisions already allowed under categorical exclusions. “It wouldn’t get rid of public engagement,” said the aide, who was granted anonymity to openly discuss deliberations.
The Republican aide said the public supports faster work in the forests to curb wildfires that endanger communities. The bill “could be a really good balance” between expanding the pace and scale of forest work and allowing public objections to projects, the aide said.
A spokesperson for the Senate sponsor of the bill, Republican John Curtis of Utah, did not respond to a request for comment.
Bill backers point to testimony from Chris French, the Forest Service’s acting associate chief, at a Senate hearing in May. “I do not see anything in ‘Fix Our Forests’ that would change that commitment of working collaboratively with our local governments and with the people that are there,” French said.
Some key Democrats, including ranking member Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, voted for the bill in committee. Klobuchar’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
But others, including Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Michael Bennet of Colorado, opposed it despite representing states that face some of the highest wildfire risks.
The legislation’s environmental ramifications remain the main stumbling block for some congressional Democrats, although there appears to be enough support to pass it in the Republican-led Senate and House with at least a smattering of Democratic votes.
Environmental and conservation groups are split, with the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation in favor and the Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice firmly opposed.
All sides agree the nation’s federally managed forests need help. Nearly 67 million acres of the national forest system is at very high or high risk of wildfire, according to the Forest Service. Nearly 79 million acres are either experiencing or likely to experience disease or insect infestation, the agency said.
One of the bill’s main Democratic sponsors in the Senate, Alex Padilla of California, believes the legislation in that chamber has been written in a way that would protect some of the NEPA regulations the administration is looking to change, aides to the senator said. That includes ensuring public involvement as projects are proposed, they said.
Haentjens, at the Virginia wilderness group, said she worries the bill may go in the opposite direction in practice, by embracing some of what the administration aims to do with the NEPA revamp, outlined in an interim final rule published in July and the subject of an online column by Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz.
Questions from timber
Even the timber industry isn’t completely sold on the bill that passed in the Senate committee, although from a different perspective. The measure appears to put new responsibilities on the Forest Service to use fast-track authorities that already exist, said Nick Smith, a spokesperson for the American Forest Resource Council, a trade group.
“We are eager to understand how the Forest Service would implement aspects of the latest version of FOFA, including the Firesheds areas that include new, additional requirements to use existing streamlined authorities the agency already has at its disposal,” Smith said in an email.
Emergency determinations — spelled out in the bipartisan infrastructure law during the Biden administration — allow forest projects to proceed without formal objection periods and with reduced consultation with tribal governments. Many Republicans opposed the infrastructure law and the Trump administration has tried to freeze some of its spending.
Emergency determinations also forbid the Forest Service from exploring alternatives to specific fast-tracked forest projects, giving the agency two choices: the proposed action, or no action.
To the timber industry and others favoring faster forest management, that’s much of the appeal: Projects to thin forest-prone forests take too long — sometimes several years — to move through agency reviews, including those required by the National Environmental Policy Act, they say. Sometimes, wildfires hit areas where such projects have been delayed.
In reality, much of the 193 million-acre national forest system is already covered by such a determination. On April 3, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins declared 112.6 million acres to be in an emergency due to high or very high wildfire risk.
That’s more than half of the system’s 144 million acres of land that’s forested, as opposed to grassland, and likely overlaps closely with the “firesheds” envisioned in the “Fix Our Forests Act,” policy groups said.
‘Practical wildfire solutions’
Some projects are already moving ahead with the scaled-back reviews. In Virginia, the Forest Service canceled one previously proposed project called Devils Hens Nest, on the Jefferson National Forest, and substituted three projects under different names and limited the public comment period to 14 days instead of the typical 30 days, Haentjens said.
Projects advanced through emergency determinations also don’t have to fall entirely within the area the USDA says is in an emergency; only 50 percent or more has to be within those boundaries, according to Rollins’ memo.
Whether the bill changes much on the way to potentially becoming law is questionable, congressional aides said. Bennet, the Colorado Democrat, has called for adding more opportunity for tribal and public engagement, but Republicans rejected an amendment to do so at the markup.
Aides said Democrats are still focused on that issue, as well as on providing funding to cover the additional forest work and community protection the legislation proposes. House Republicans, limited by their own spending-related rules on legislation, have resisted such efforts.
The bill’s route to becoming law will dictate those debates, said the Democratic aide, whose office supports such changes. The best odds, this aide said, would be to attach the “Fix Our Forests Act” to a must-pass spending bill that might give Democratic senators some leverage.
Padilla focused on the positive in a news release, calling the measure’s passage “real progress toward protecting Americans and our environment through forward-thinking, practical wildfire solutions.”
Four environmental groups have backed the Senate bill: the EDF, the NWF, The Nature Conservancy and the National Audubon Society. All had previously expressed misgivings about the House version.
In a letter of support that Padilla’s office included in a news release, the organizations said the measure has “come a long way” since consideration in the House earlier this year, while still falling short on funding.
They wrote in the letter: “We believe the wildfire crisis our country is facing, due in large part to the effects of climate change, is too serious and too dangerous for us not to engage in this important bipartisan forest management and wildfire proposal that could impact how the areas most at risk for wildfires are treated and how the decisions to treat are made.”
Contact this reporter on Signal at hellmarcman.49.
