The Forest Service should invite less public comment than usual in its drive to harvest more timber from millions of acres of national forests, the agency has told regional foresters.
In a memo to regional foresters Tuesday, the agency’s acting deputy chief for the national forest system, Jacqueline Emanuel, said formal public comment periods won’t typically be part of projects the Forest Service plans under an emergency designation Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made April 3 for most of the system’s 193 million acres.
Instead, Emanuel said, regional foresters should seek alternatives to formally getting public input as projects are planned, such as posting information on Forest Service webpages or distributing notices on agency mailing lists.
Forest policy groups said it’s not unusual for the Forest Service to reduce public engagement on urgent projects after wildfires or other natural disasters. But they said the scope of what the Trump administration now defines as an emergency across most of the forest system is unprecedented, if not questionable.
