A project proposed by Los Padres National Forest will impact recreation, habitat, and endangered species 

In the hierarchy of environmental law, projects proposed by federal agencies are subject to one of two kinds of review: environmental analysis, a once-over-lightly that is often a straight shot to a finding of no significant impact. That level of analysis is intended, obviously, for projects unlikely to have a significant impact on the environment.

The other kind of review is an environmental impact statement (EIS), a highly detailed, lengthy, expansive review intended for major projects that are likely to have major impacts.

The U.S. Forest Service has proposed an "Ecological Restoration Project" for the Los Padres National Forest. It intends to log trees and clear native chaparral habitat across 235,000 acres—covering the Mt. Pinos, Santa Lucia, Monterey, and Santa Barbara ranger districts.

It has the potential for considerable significant impacts on 63,000 acres of designated critical habitat and 19 listed species. It could substantially alter 134,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas and 92,000 acres of potential wilderness areas, and impact 14 species and 64,000 acres of critical habitat protected under the Endangered Species Act. It will impact outdoor recreation, soil and water resources, and climate change.

And just for good measure, thousands of acres of the lands earmarked for special wilderness or scenic area protections by the Central Coast Heritage Protection Act are included.

It's supposed to be all about fire protection, but wildfire research has repeatedly shown that remote vegetation removal—especially in the form of clearing chaparral and cutting mature trees—is at best ineffective as a fire mitigation strategy and at worst could increase fire risk.

"Wow," I hear you say, "good thing they're preparing an environmental impact statement!"

You are so young and innocent. The Forest Service has made it clear that it intends to prepare an environmental assessment—that limited, cursory, once-over for minor projects—and call it good.

Looking at a map of the project area, you have to wonder what part of "major project" the Forest Service does not understand.

Which reminds me: In 2003 George W. Bush introduced the Healthy Forests Initiative, which my colleagues in the Sierra Club immediately dubbed "No Tree Left Behind." A windfall for logging companies based on the false premise that landscape-wide logging—aggressively "thinning" millions of acres of backcountry forests miles away from communities—will decrease forest fires, the HFI also made sure to include categorical exemptions from that notoriously strict standard of review, an environmental impact statement.

The Sierra Club noted that this constituted a proposal "to limit the analysis of environmental impacts, repeal the ability of the public to appeal bad projects, increase the degradation of wild forests, and turn scientific forest management back 40 years." The Sierra Club sued over that EIS exemption provision, and the court subsequently found that the Forest Service's assertion of a categorical exclusion from an EIS "was arbitrary and capricious."

That was then, this is now. On Sept. 27, Los Padres ForestWatch, the Santa Lucia and Santa Barbara/Ventura chapters of the Sierra Club, and half a dozen other environmental organizations sent the Forest Service a 68-page letter detailing the highly problematic nature of its decision to pursue its "Ecological Restoration" project minus a full environmental impact statement.

Some key takeaways:

• U.S. Forest Service regulations specifically identify two classes of actions that "require environmental impact statements." Of these two classes of actions, Class 2 actions include those "that would substantially alter the undeveloped character of an inventoried roadless area or a potential wilderness area." The "Restoration Project" will substantially impact and alter the undeveloped character of thousands of acres in inventoried roadless areas and potential wilderness areas.

• In 2018, the U.S. Forest Service prepared an EIS for the Monterey Ranger District Strategic Community Fuel Break Improvement Project that covered a mere 542 acres in the Ventana Wilderness section of the Los Padres National Forest and had just a fraction of the significant impacts this project is likely to have.

• Habitat for animal species in the project area protected under the Endangered Species Act includes designated critical habitat for the arroyo toad, California condor, California red-legged frog, conservancy fairy shrimp, least Bell's vireo, southwestern willow flycatcher, and vernal pool fairy shrimp. It also includes 22.4 miles of streams designated as critical habitat for the Southern California steelhead and 18.6 miles of streams designated as critical habitat for the south-central California coast steelhead.

• The National Forest Management Act directs the U.S. Forest Service to develop land management plans called "forest plans" to guide management of forest resources. The U.S. Forest Service implements a forest plan through the approval or disapproval of particular projects. Proposed projects must be consistent with the forest plan. The project as currently proposed is inconsistent with the forest plan for Los Padres, resulting in a significant effect that must be fully analyzed in an EIS.

You can send the Forest Service a message of your own.

The rules are there for a reason. The U.S. Forest Service must prepare an EIS because the sheer scale and known significance of the project's impacts require it. Δ

Andrew Christie is the director of the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club. Reach him through the editor at [email protected].