Our Forests Are in Bad Shape

The United States Forest Service currently faces a staggering 80-100 million acre treatment deficit for the 193 million acres of forests it manages. With over half of the acreage of our national forests requiring immediate treatment to reduce wildfire risk, the agency is falling so far behind, this is becoming one of the largest policy and management failures ever created by the U.S. political system.

The result is wildfires are burning on average 7 million acres of our forests every year. Many of these are high-severity fires that are permanently altering the landscapes they burn. Wildfire is the largest cause of habitat destruction. It is one of the largest contributors to air pollution. Wildfire is destroying watersheds. For BlueRibbon Coalition members, every year entire forests are closed during firefighting activities, and then it is years before the burn scars are reopened for public use.

A recent study published in Science, one of the most prestigious academic publications in the United States, found that for every dollar spent in wildfire mitigation we prevent $3.73 dollars in economic losses.

Reasonable people should be asking the hard question of how did we get to this point? Who could possibly be benefiting from all of this?

The Tools to Prevent Megafire Exist. They're Tied Up in Court.

At BlueRibbon Coalition we comment on hundreds of agency projects every year. Many of these include the very treatments the Forest Service is proposing to reduce wildfire risk. We have a front row seat to what is causing this system to fail. We call it NEPA Jail.

The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, is the environmental law that requires environmental review of forest management projects. This law combined with other laws like the Endangered Species Act, the Administrative Procedures Act, and the Roadless Rule create a legal operating system that incentivizes environmental lawyers to challenge these projects if they impact the environment in any way. The best phrase to describe this is "extractive litigation."

The combination of litigation tactics and pressure have killed millions of acres worth of proposed treatments. It has created incentives for agency staff to not waste limited resources developing additional projects that will never see the light of day. Many others are held up through years of delays and appeals.

In short, an army of environmental lawyers have spent decades filing hundreds of lawsuits to sentence our forests to NEPA jail. And, they’ve made a fortune doing it — paid for by the U.S. Taxpayers. Acre for acre and measured against habitat destruction and billions in economic losses, the wholesale destruction of our national forests by extractive litigation is the most damaging extractive industry currently operating on our public lands.

NEPA Jail Tracker

Our NEPA Jail tracker below is BlueRibbon Coalition's running, sourced record from decided proposals dating back to the late 1990s when anti-access orgs were given a toolset of litigation weapons.

Projects here averaged 4.2 years just to clear NEPA before a decision is made, while the longest sat 20 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.

What You're Looking At Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling

We built this tracker one project at a time, from court dockets, agency records, and public documents. It is the most complete accounting of NEPA-stalled forest projects we could verify at this time. It is also an undercount. For every project on this page, there are others still buried in regional offices, local fights, and lawsuits we haven't reached yet. The real numbers are bigger than what you see here. We could use your help! Search the database below, and if you know about a project we're missing, let's add it!  Fill out the form at the end of this page.