Our National Forest System holds some of America’s most iconic public lands. But the Trump administration is once again hard at work to limit the public’s ability to track and comment on logging projects on public lands. A new proposal would more than halve the public comment and objection periods for large projects on our national forests. This would limit the amount of time the public has to analyze and thoughtfully comment on proposals that can have a big impact on our public lands. These projects can be massive, spanning thousands of acres and impacting drinking watersheds, special recreation areas, and vulnerable wildlife habitats.
Please join us in demanding that the Trump administration withdraw the proposed rule by signing onto the letter below.
| Dear Acting Director of Ecosystem Management Coordination,
We respectfully request that you withdraw the proposed rule — it ignores the critical role the public and outside experts play in providing information for public lands decisions. The organizations and individuals who submit public comments for national forest logging projects provide essential expert insights and real-world observations. They often have local, ecological knowledge and deep ties to the forests covered by the proposed projects. Providing this knowledge can be time-consuming. Cutting the comment and objection periods short on these projects will leave our forests, communities, and wildlife worse off. The projects impacted by the proposed rule can cover tens of thousands of acres and can span decades. The new rule would limit the public comment and objection periods for Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements to 10 days and 20 days, respectively. This is simply not enough time for individuals and small volunteer-based organizations to draft comments. Commenters often must review an environmental document, determine which areas of the project site to visit, coordinate with the appropriate specialists to evaluate site conditions, visit the site to verify the information in the environmental document and survey for additional information, analyze findings, and describe those findings in written comments. It can take several hours to reach project sites from nearby population centers, or even to travel from one end of a project footprint to another, and site visits can occur over multiple days or weeks. The new time constraints and page limits will lead to ill-informed management decisions on public lands and will result in less transparency and accountability of logging in national forests. Communities, wildlife, drinking watersheds, and beloved recreation areas will be impacted by the proposed rule, and none of those impacts are properly accounted for. The rule must be withdrawn. Sincerely, |
