The Bush administration has advised the U.S. Forest Service to eliminate reviews of its actions by other federal agencies for compliance with endangered species, clean water, and historical preservation laws.
The agency plans to remove any consultation or other "process" it deems unrelated to "the Four Threats" – fire risk, invasive species, unmanaged recreation and loss of open land – according to a memo detailing instructions given in January by Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth. The memo calls for the elimination of endangered species consultation on "inland aquatic species with both … Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries."
In addition, building on a recently finalized rule waiving Endangered Species Act consultations on fire-related activities, the Forest Service would expand this no consultation stance "to all land management activities."
The policy removes the obligation for outside environmental analyses of any herbicide applications done in the name of controlling invasive plants and eliminates compliance with Historic Preservation Act rules requiring review by state agencies of protection of historical and cultural artifacts.
The memo was not made public by the Forest Service but was released Thursday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals.
The Bush administration has defended the new Forest Service policy as a commonsense approach to environmental reviews and insisted natural resources, public health and wildlife will be protected.
But PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch says officials fail to grasp the difference between "streamlining and steamrolling." "The Forest Service's track record makes a powerful case for more outside review not less," Ruch said. The move to end interagency consultation eliminates checks on Forest Service abuses and will lead to more litigation, Ruch explained, because lawsuits would become the only avenue for securing agency compliance with resource protection laws.
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