Forest Service Bypasses Environmental Review

The U.S. Forest Service announced an overhaul Tuesday of national forest management plans, eliminating important environmental reviews on the potential impacts on forests and fish and wildlife.

The U.S. Forest Service announced an overhaul Tuesday of the way it devises the blueprints that govern national forests, eliminating lengthy environmental reviews that often give critics toeholds to battle logging and other projects.

The agency said plans that guide management of each forest no longer will be subject to the National Environmental Policy Act, a law requiring agencies to take a hard look at the environmental effects of their decisions.

Forest Service officials concluded that because the plans do not direct specific projects in the forests they have no environmental effects.

It's the latest in an increasing number of exceptions that the Forest Service has carved out of the landmark law, passed in 1969 as environmentalism gained steam across the country.

Forest Service leaders said the change will simplify forest planning, making it more accessible to the public. Individual projects on national forests, such as timber sales or road development, still must face routine environmental analysis.

But conservation groups said the shift reflects Bush administration efforts to shut out critics.

Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild said the administration is bypassing a law that is like a "bill of rights" for the environment, legally guaranteeing the public a chance to participate in essential federal decisions. He said the federal position that forest plans have no environmental effects makes little sense.

"The public expects forest plans to protect and restore wilderness, old-growth, drinking water and wildlife habitat," Heiken said.

Environmentalists also said the creation of forest plans offers a rare opportunity to look at large-scale issues such as protection of wildlife habitat that might be harder to weigh at the scale of a single road project.

But a top Forest Service official said the shift away from the lengthy environmental analyses would create a more open and visible planning approach for national forests that is less cloaked by legal formalities.

The legal demands that surrounded forest planning until now, with their formal appeal periods and cumbersome procedures, create "more of a we-they relationship between the public and the agency than we want to foster," said Fred Norbury, associate deputy chief of the Forest Service.

They also forced the Forest Service to spend time and money analyzing iffy scenarios. The agency predicts forest management plans that used to take five years to complete will take only two to three years under its newly revised rules.

"The idea is to spend less time speculating on what might happen and spend more time focusing on what is happening," Norbury said. "It's just a better use of our resources."

In the Pacific Northwest, the Umatilla, Malheur and Wallowa-Whitman national forests in Oregon and the Okanogan, Wenatchee and Colville national forests in Washington are revising their forest management plans and will follow the new approach.

The Associated Press contributed to this story. Michael Milstein: 503-294-7689; michaelmilstein@news.oregonian.com