FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Court Throws Out Bush Changes to National Forest Rules

Contact:     Pete Frost, Western Environmental Law Center,
                    541-543-0018

COURT THROWS OUT BUSH CHANGES
TO NATIONAL FOREST RULES 

A federal judge ruled today that the Bush Administration illegally adopted wholesale changes to the planning regulations that control activities in the country’s national forest system.  Federal Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton ruled that the Administration failed to consider and analyze the effects of the “paradigm shift” in changes it made to the rules, including eliminating the requirement that forests must ensure that special wildlife species will survive.

“People who love wildlife and care about our public forests should be elated by this decision,” said Pete Frost, attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center in Oregon, who represents conservationists in the case.  “The court recognized that all of us have the right to say how our forests will be managed.”

In 1982, the Reagan Administration adopted the first comprehensive regulations to determine how the nation’s 192 million acres of forests and grasslands shall be managed.  The regulations required each forest to write individual plans that identify special wildlife species, such as grizzly bears, lynx, and goshawk, and ensure that they survive.  In 2005, the Bush Administration eliminated that requirement, giving each forest discretion whether to protect wildlife at all when it revised its plan.

Further, previously, the public had the right to review and comment on the forest planning regulations before they were adopted.  In contrast, in 2005, the Bush Administration refused to prepare an analysis of the environmental effects of its changes to the rules, or give the public the change to review or comment on such an analysis.

 All but one forest plan in the nation is based on the standards and requirements in the 1982 regulations.  Recently, each forest began the process of revising its plan.  Some chose to do so under the 1982 regulations, and some chose to do so under the 2005 regulations.  The court’s ruling means the Forest Service cannot revise any plans based on the 2005 rule.

The conservation group plaintiffs include Citizens for Better Forestry, Gifford Pinchot Task Force, Cascadia Wildlands Center, The Lands Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Utah Environmental Conference, Conservation Northwest, Oregon Wild, and the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center.

Notes:

The forest planning rules are some of the most important environmental safeguards for public lands.  According to the 1976 National Forest Management Act, the USDA Forest Service is required to develop rules governing how each National Forest will develop a management plan with public involvement and keep it up to date by revising it every 10-15 years.

These rules determine how 192 million acres of publicly-owned forests are managed.  Tens of millions of Americans get their drinking water from watersheds that originate in national forests. These rules also govern the public's right to be involved in major decisions affecting those lands. These rules require forest plans to provide for recreation, protect streams, wildlife habitat, and soil, and they are supposed to set sustainable limits on harmful activities like logging, mining and grazing.

The Bush Administration repealed rules that were based on significant input from scientists, and adopted rules that it described as a “paradigm shift” from the past. The new rules eliminated environmental safeguards intended to ensure healthy populations of wildlife and they eliminated all "resource protection standards". The new rules also eliminated requirements to monitor the impacts of logging. The court said that these changes were "not logical outgrowths" of prior rules and such substantial changes required the Forest Service to follow legal requirements for public notice and comment.

The new rules have been criticized for "outsourcing democracy" by incorporating new standards from private industry which required the public to pay $80 to obtain a copy of privately developed rules known as "environmental management systems."  The new rules also allowed forest plans to be revised without conducting a full review of environmental impacts and without following the normal process of public review and comment.

The court found that the law was violated when the Bush Administration adopted the new rules without preparing an analysis of environmental effects and without consulting with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service concerning the impacts to threatened and endangered fish and wildlife.  In fact, the Bush Administration took the untenable position that rules governing millions of acres of forest would have "no effect" on endangered species, even though our national forests include much of the nation's best habitat for threatened species like the bald eagle gray wolf, and grizzly bear.

The court objected to the fact that the Bush Administration adopted sweeping changes to the forest planning rules without allowing for public review and comment as required by law.  The court said that the Forest Service "charted a new path" by adopting sweeping changes to environmental rules, yet attempting to exempt such rule-making from environmental review.

The court issued an injunction setting aside the 2005 forest planning rules and leaving it up to the Forest Service to make the initial determination to apply the long-standing 1982 rules or the untested 2000 or 2002 rules.

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