logging
Public Lands Watch: Forest Service proposes NEPA regulatory revisions
Forest Service proposes revisions to NEPA regulations to increase exemptions for logging and other projects
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has long been a lightning rod for debates over public land management. NEPA requires federal agencies to fully analyze and publicly disclose the environmental impacts of proposed major federal actions that significantly affect the environment, including analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives and a response to public comments. …
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CONTINUE READINGSecretary Zinke Misleads the Public About Wildfires and Federal Public Land Management
Secretary of Interior’s Op-Ed Ignores Science and Land-Use Planning to Falsely Blame Wildfire Risk on “Radical Environmentalists”
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke published an op-ed today calling for “active management” of our federal public lands to reduce wildfire risk, and blaming “radical environmentalists who would rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods” for the prevalance and lethality of wildfires in the American West. Zinke’s op-ed is disingenuous, …
CONTINUE READINGPublic Lands Watch: Resilient Federal Forests Act
Bill to reduce environmental protections for timber management on federal lands passes House
The Resilient Federal Forests Act (RFFA), H.R. 2936—which would curb environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for a variety of forest management activities on National Forest and BLM lands—passed the House November 1. (We previously wrote about a version of this bill in committee here.) NEPA requires agencies to consider whether proposed …
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CONTINUE READINGLogging, tropical forests, and biodiversity — what we don’t know
Cross-posted at The Berkeley Blog. A new paper in Conservation Biology (subscription required) from researchers at UC Berkeley and elsewhere provides an important reminder that we often don’t know as much as we think we do about ecological systems and the effects of human actions on those systems. Lead author Benjamin Ramage and colleagues evaluated …
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CONTINUE READINGDeconstructing Today’s Supreme Court Arguments in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center
Legal Planet colleague Holly Doremus did an excellent job last week of previewing today’s U.S. Supreme Court arguments in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, a potentially important case involving the scope of USEPA’s point source permit jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. But given the results of those arguments and a major, late-breaking regulatory …
CONTINUE READINGIn the Supreme Court’s Crosshairs: the Ninth Circuit’s Environmental Jurisprudence
All eyes will be on the U.S. Supreme Court this week, as the justices conclude their current Term and, among other things, issue their long-awaited decision(s) on the constitutionality of the newly-enacted federal healthcare law. But the Supreme Court also has some other, key decisions to make as to whether to take up four controversial environmental cases from …
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