The United States Forest Service’s most important job is balancing the many needs and uses of the 193 million acres of public land it manages. But the Trump administration is preparing to abandon the process that makes it possible, eliminating public participation from the overwhelming majority of decisions affecting our national forests. If the Forest Service has its way, visitors won’t know what’s coming until logging trucks show up at their favorite trailheads or a path for a gas pipeline is cleared below a scenic vista.
At stake is how the Forest Service complies (or doesn’t) with the National Environmental Policy Act, our nation’s most important environmental law. The law requires every government agency to look for less harmful ways of meeting its goals. To that end, agency decisions must be based on solid science and made in the sunlight of public accountability. Each federal agency has some leeway to implement the law, but the Forest Service’s newly proposed rules would instead circumvent it, creating loopholes for logging projects, road construction and even permits for pipelines and other utilities.
Public participation is important because our national forests are as vast and complex as they are beloved. There is no formula for management; cutting trees isn’t inherently good or bad. It depends, always, on the context. Just over 75 percent of national forest lands are found in the arid West, where logging practices can either exacerbate or mitigate the risk of wildfire. The remainder is split between Alaska, with its vast old-growth forests and untouched wilderness, and the extremely diverse forests of the East, where you can walk through a dozen ecosystems in a day’s hike.
