The misleadingly named ‘Fix Our Forests Act’ would do anything but

When bad things are happening, we naturally feel a strong urge to do something, anything, in response. Unfortunately, if we fail to think through our panicky response, we may end up making things worse, like airline passengers who respond to in-flight emergencies by trying to open cabin doors in mid-air.

A legitimately serious problem in this country is the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires. Climate change has helped dry out forests so that many fires now spread rapidly. Misguided forest management practices also have played a role: by rapidly extinguishing relatively benign natural fires that periodically thin out the underbrush, and by clear-cutting fire-resistant old-growth forests, we have set the stage for the far more destructive fires we see today.

Unfortunately, some in Congress are proposing responses that would only make the wildfire crisis worse. In particular, H.R. 8790, the misleadingly titled “Fix Our Forests Act,” would pave the way for even more ill-informed and counterproductive mismanagement of our forests.

Sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the bill’s most significant feature is its sweeping rejection of applying the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to forestry management. This sounds strange on its face, and it is: if forest management does not raise important environmental concerns, what would? But it turns out to be even worse than you would think.

NEPA’s function is to promote informed decision-making by requiring that the federal government look before it leaps. It does not mandate or prohibit any projects; it simply requires that a project’s likely effects be assessed before it is approved. This is the essence of good government. We could use some similar look-before-you-leap requirements for other areas of government: international engagements, economic policies, foreign trade rules and so forth.

NEPA is anything but the rigid, impenetrable barrier its critics suggest. Numerous expedited NEPA procedures exist, and Congress has promulgated dozens of “categorical exclusions” that exempt some types of projects from detailed environmental review based on the high priority of the project or the low likelihood of serious environmental problems.

The “Fix Our Forests Act,” however, effectively rejects environmental review altogether across hundreds of thousands of acres. Although some categories of forestry projects may raise fewer environmental concerns, as reflected in the existing “categorical exclusions,” it is absurd to say that all forestry projects are environmentally benign. We need look no further than the current wave of wildfires to see just how destructive ill-considered forest management can be.

So what might happen if we stop considering the environmental effects of our forestry policies before we act? Unsurprisingly, the timber companies’ friends in Congress think the solution to any forestry problem is to clear-cut. They argue that if the trees are gone, they cannot burn. But reality is more complicated. Highly flammable small trees and brush grow back quickly, ready to magnify a small fire into a large one.

Moreover, in the absence of the competent scientific guidance that the NEPA process provides about how to improve our forests’ health, agencies will adopt ad hoc measures of their performance to try to show “progress.” These measures may have nothing to do with actually solving the wildfire problem, but they allow everyone to claim they are “doing something.”

For the Forest Service, the easiest such measure is the number of acres “treated” in some way. The quickest and cheapest “treatment” is letting the timber companies clear-cut the forest. So to allow the Forest Service to brag to Congress that it is “doing something,” it will invite the needless destruction of ever more of our forests — while simultaneously making the fire threat even worse.

This is precisely the kind of disastrous unintended consequence that has plagued American forestry policy for decades. Stripping away environmental reviews would all but ensure that we repeat this kind of blunder. If the guardians of public forests hear only the self-interested siren songs of the loggers, with no objective scientific input providing balance, the outcome will be all too predictable.

We absolutely should take action to address ruinous wildfires. But we need to be much smarter than the meat-cleaver approach of the “Fix Our Forests Act.” Part of the answer is to adequately fund, staff and train Forest Service personnel to quickly review, analyze and authorize needed forest restoration projects based on the best available science. The Biden administration reports that innovations of this kind have cut average review times six months, an unprecedented reduction. The cost of continuing and expanding these practical but unglamorous reforms is remarkably modest compared to the devastation — including increased fire risks — that H.R. 8790’s tsunami of ill-considered logging would bring.

The careful work of landing the airplane is far less dramatic than opening a cabin door at 30,000 feet, but it is the only way to achieve what we need.

David Super teaches at Georgetown Law.