137 Environmental Groups Oppose the Fix Our Forests Act

Hi @Nicole Snider. Please see our Fix Our Forests Act training page, which includes FAQs to give our perspective on the concerns raised by these groups.

Most of these same groups also opposed the Energy Permitting Reform Act. And that's okay – there's nothing wrong with different groups disagreeing and arriving a different conclusions about a given piece of legislation. But in both cases CCL staff concluded that the bills would be a net good if passed by Congress 🤓

@Nicole Snider
Can you find another environmental group that supports permit reform, nuclear and carbon price ? And that is non-partisan. ?

@Deborah Clark If you click the Like option a second time, your original like will be removed.

@Dana Nuccitelli

The Sierra Club says it changes NEPA and ESA. That is just mis-information ?

Hi @Rob Johnson. The bill doesn't touch those laws, but it does expand categorical exclusions, which are categories of projects that are excluded from extensive environmental assessments. That's what they're talking about. See this section of the training page:

@Dana Nuccitelli

I knew about the CE from you, so they are calling the CE as NEPA.

@Dana Nuccitelli

Does the bill have provisions which are not funded ? So we still have to lobby for funding ?

Hi @Rob Johnson. I think they way they tend to word it is that the bill ‘bypasses’ environmental laws like NEPA (or something like that), which refers to the expanded categorical exclusions.

The bill doesn't currently include any funding streams, and so its provisions would need to be funded using existing agency budgets, unless that's revised in a later version of the bill.

@Dana Nuccitelli
I guess we think that the CEs will be used for fuel reduction, while Sierra thinks they will be used for logging, right ?

Hi @Rob Johnson. The categorical exclusions are used for a variety of wildfire resilience projects, including forest thinning and controlled burns. The groups in opposition are concerned that the expansion will allow for too much expanded logging in the form of forest thinning.

The way I see it, there are two risks.

• Risk 1 if we pass Fix Our Forests is that the US Forest Service does a bad job with this expanded categorical exclusion authority and allows too much logging, or counter-productive wildfire management projects in general.
• Risk 2 if we don't pass Fix Our Forests is that we continue with the status quo of too-slow wildfire management practices, and more forests burn in extreme wildfires.

The question is which risk you're more worried about. The opposition groups are more worried about Risk 1 and we're more worried about Risk 2. But I think they're both valid concerns.

@Dana Nuccitelli Is it really such a binary choice? I think that many opposition groups are concerned that FOFA won't actually result in the thinning of the right trees and vegetation in the right locations to mitigate damage to homes, property and health. I have seen assessments that the bill would result in increased GHG emissions by reducing stored carbon--this might not be true, but it would be great to see the concern addressed in an evidence-based manner. It would be really interesting to know whether there is any analysis underway of the anticipated overall GHG emissions impact of the bill, although I understand that might be a difficult questions to answer. Danielle Watson briefly mentioned the anticipated carbon impact to California--perhaps American Forests has broader data about this question? Thinking back to last fall's permitting discussion, the detailed research analysis and clear communication that you did about the “bottom line” of overall GHG emissions helped a number of CCL volunteers to understand CCL's support.

Hi @Joanne Leovy. I think we're saying the same thing. It boils down to whether we feel that we can trust the Forest Service to perform expedited wildfire mitigation projects that yield a net benefit to our forests and their carbon storage. Opposing groups want more oversight to make sure that's the case, but oversight takes time (often many years), so it's a tradeoff.

Danielle mentioned that her colleague is finalizing some sort of analysis finding that these kinds of projects yield long-term carbon/climate benefits, but I don't think it's been published yet.

@Joanne Leovy We're working on having Danielle appear on an upcoming Thursday night live training. We'll let everyone know as soon as we've confirmed a date.

@Dana Nuccitelli Just had a very uncomfortable interaction with an environmental lawyer on our state Zoom call who adamantly told me that changing a categorical exclusion is, in fact, “amending NEPA.” (I support the law, just concerned about whether this messaging is “technically right.")

I don't think so, @Sara Mason. Federal agencies can add and change categorical exclusions through the rulemaking process. They're not changing the law itself – only Congress could do that. But I think getting into an argument of semantics with a lawyer is probably not the best idea 😅 And I also don't know why this particular categorical exclusion change is being done through Congress rather than the Forest Service.