FOLLOW THE MONEY
NEPA JAIL TRACKER
Federal agencies keep proposing thinning, fuel breaks, and dead-tree removal that our forests and communities need. Then anti-access organizations drag the work into "NEPA jail," suing to stop it while the fuel load grows. This is BlueRibbon Coalition's running, sourced record from decided proposals dating back to 2001— when the Roadless Rule became a litigation weapon. Projects here averaged 2.4 years just to clear NEPA before a decision is made, while the longest sat 14.6 years! All while U.S. taxpayers were forced to pay over $34.4 million in lawyer fees to the litigators who sued the agencies and prevailed... and that's just the fees that were accounted for.
A dying and burnt forest does not conserve a forest, protect wildlife, nor allow for recreation.
And when they win, taxpayers pay their lawyers.
Under the Equal Access to Justice Act, attorney fees for groups that prevail against the federal government are paid straight from the U.S. Treasury's Judgment Fund. The public funds the very lawsuits that block wildfire mitigation on public land. Taxpayers have paid about $34.4 million in attorney fees tied to Forest Service litigation from 2000 through 2025: roughly $16.3 million for 2000–2010 (GAO) and $18.1 million in documented EAJA payments for 2011–2025, from the Forest Service's own budget records. About $1.43 million of that is tied to the specific projects in the table below; the rest spans the agency's full litigation caseload. A 2012 GAO investigation also found the agency does not reliably track the full total.
Sources: U.S. Forest Service Congressional Budget Justifications FY2020–FY2027 (annual EAJA payment tables, FY2011–2025); GAO-12-417R (2012) for FY2000–2010; U.S. DOJ Office of Legal Counsel and Congressional Research Service on EAJA / the Treasury Judgment Fund.
Serial Litigators
The same names appear again and again. Number of verified wildfire-mitigation and forest-health projects each group has challenged.
Every Project in the Jail
Search all 307 tracked projects, newest first, and tap any column to re-sort. Scroll side-to-side for more information, including litigators.
| Project | Forest / Unit | Region | Year � | Outcome | Yrs in NEPA | Haz-Fuels Acres | Litigant / Opposing Group |
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About this data. The core set comes from the U.S. Forest Service Planning, Appeals, and Litigation System (PALS) and FACTS activity records, extended with 2001–2005 and 2019–2026 cases from public court records and reporting. For verified projects the opposing organization is named with a source link and a confidence rating (only High/Medium matches are named). "Haz-Fuels Acres" is the treatment footprint from FACTS; total project-area acres (a separate, larger measure) sum to over 5.3 million across the projects that report it. Do not add the two acreage figures together. Fee figures come from the Forest Service EAJA ledger and court orders. Data current as of 2026-07-01. Compiled by BlueRibbon Coalition.