FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BOISE, Idaho — July 24, 2026 — As another record wildfire season burns across the West, the BlueRibbon Coalition (BRC) today launched the NEPA Jail Litigation Tracker, the most complete public record to date of forest-management and fuels-reduction projects that have been stalled, scaled back, or stopped entirely by litigation on federal public lands.
The searchable database, available at blueribboncoalition.org/nepa-jail, documents each project by name: who challenged it, how long it sat in environmental review, its outcome, and the taxpayer cost. The launch numbers include:
- 273 projects tracked, which BRC describes as an undercount
- 162 projects killed or reduced
- 69% of tracked treatment acres tied up in projects that were killed or scaled back
- 4.2 years on average from proposal to decision, with some projects delayed more than a decade
- Over $34.4 million in taxpayer-funded attorney fees paid to organizations that sued the agencies from 2000 to 2025
The tracker arrives amid a widening crisis in forest health. The U.S. Forest Service faces an 80-to-100-million-acre treatment backlog across the 193 million acres it manages, even as wildfires burn roughly 7 million acres a year, many of them high-severity fires that permanently alter the landscape. A 2024 study published in Science found that every dollar spent on wildfire mitigation prevents an estimated $3.73 in economic losses.
BRC attributes much of the delay to what it calls "extractive litigation": a pattern in which a small number of anti-access organizations use the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act, the Roadless Rule, and the Administrative Procedures Act to challenge and block agency projects, then recover attorney fees from the U.S. Treasury when they prevail.
"For years I've sat in these rooms and watched a small group of litigious organizations tie the Forest Service and BLM in knots, blocking the very projects meant to reduce wildfire risk," said Simone Griffin, Policy Director for the BlueRibbon Coalition. "The agencies aren't failing to act. They are being sued into paralysis. This tracker finally puts that pattern on the public record, project by project, so people can see who is doing it and what it is costing them."
BRC connects the trend to its long-running fight to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, which the organization says gives litigants a legal hook to force agencies to carve treatment out of inventoried roadless areas. The Coalition has published a five-part series debunking common Roadless Rule claims and supports the Fix Our Forests Act and legislation to permanently repeal the Roadless Rule.
BRC is inviting the public to use the tracker and to submit tips on additional stalled projects, noting the record will be updated as new cases are confirmed.
The NEPA Jail Litigation Tracker is available now at blueribboncoalition.org/nepa-jail.
About BlueRibbon Coalition BlueRibbon Coalition is a national nonprofit that has defended and championed responsible access to public lands since 1987. Through litigation, advocacy, and public awareness, BRC works to keep public lands and trails open for recreation and to promote active, common-sense management of America's public lands.
