For over a decade, WELC has led the fight to preserve our national forests by defending the integrity of regulations that dictate how they will be managed.

In the mid-1970s, Congress became increasingly concerned that the Forest Service was allowing widespread clearcut logging throughout the 192 million acre national forest system.  Led by conservationists such as Senator Frank Church of Idaho, in 1976 Congress enacted the National Forest Management Act (NFMA).  NFMA requires each of the 155 national forests to write a plan that establishes how it will be managed, and requires the Forest Service to write regulations setting the guidelines for the individual forest plans.

The Forest Service issued its first set of regulations in 1979, but they were not detailed enough, so in 1982 it adopted regulations that were far more comprehensive.  The 1982 Rule has a number of sound provisions.  It included a “viability” standard that required each forest plan to identify certain “management indicator species” of wildlife that could be measured to gauge the health of the forest as a whole.  It established limits on clearcutting.  And it set up a system that ensured that the public would be meaningfully involved in how forest plans are developed, and implemented.  Click here to view the 1982 NFMA Rule (pdf).

By the late 1990s, the Forest Service completed management plans under the 1982 Rule for virtually every national forest in the country.  But the timber industry and other commercial interests argued that these plans did not allow enough logging and other commercial uses.  In 2000, they persuaded the Clinton Administration to revise the rule and open our national forests to more logging and other commercial activities.

In 2000, WELC represented a coalition of 12 grassroots conservation groups to challenge the process by which the 1982 Rule was revised.  Our challenge ultimately led to a favorable decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the Forest Service illegally adopted the 2000 revisions, because it never gave the public the right to review and comment on the environmental effects of the revised rule. Click here to view the Ninth Circuit Decision  (pdf). When the Bush Administration came to power, it too disliked the 2000 revisions, but because it want to go even further than the Clinton revisions in opening the national forests to commercial activities.  So in January, 2005, the Bush Administration adopted a wholly new regulation that literally cuts out the heart of the 1982 Rule, and drops any and all mandatory standards.

So WELC again went back to court with the same grassroots groups that successfully challenged the 2000 revisions, but this time national environmental groups (which sat out the last fight) and the State of California opposed the 2005 Rule as well.  Ultimately, WELC prevailed against the Bush Administration, and the court vacated the 2005 Rule, because the administration again failed to inform the public of the environmental effects of the changes, and failed to seek the opinions of wildlife agencies about how the new rule would harm fish and wildlife in our forests.  Click here to view the District Court decision on the 2005 Rule (pdf).

At this time, not surprisingly, the Bush Administration has issued yet another rule – the 2005 revisions dressed up as a 2008 Rule, but this time accompanied the new rule with an empty analysis of the environmental effects of eviscerating the 1982 Rule.  Click here to view the 2008 Rule (pdf).

WELC has again gone back to court a third time – the only law firm to stand up to these successive attempts to weaken the regulations that govern how are national forests are managed – and will work to ensure that the regulations will be as protective as possible.  Click here to view WELC's complaint (pdf).

Attorney: Pete Frost