Long-term management plans for national forests will no longer go through the formal environmental impact statement process, the U.S. Forest Service announced Tuesday.

Based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and a new approach to forest planning, the Forest Service concluded that writing the plans has no effect on the environment, and any projects envisioned by them will still have to go through formal analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act, said Fred Norbury, associate deputy chief for the national forest system.

"Our thinking was if a plan doesn't cause anything to happen, and it doesn't prohibit anything from happening, it really doesn't have any environmental effects," Norbury said from Washington, D.C.

Under NEPA, public involvement and environmental analyses are required whenever the Forest Service undertakes changes to forest management plans - a process that occurs for each U.S. forest every 15 years. Such revisions are under way for the Shoshone and Bridger-Teton national forests in Wyoming.

Under the new rule, any update, or significant change, would not be subject to NEPA review.

Conservation groups complained that by applying what is called a categorical exclusion to forest plans, the Bush administration was continuing long-term efforts to undercut NEPA.

"This is what lame-duck administrations do when they get the tar beaten out of them," said Andy Stahl, executive director for Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, based in Oregon.

"They (the Bush administration) won't be able to get anything through Congress, so all that's left is administrative rulings" - much as President Clinton did when faced with a Congress controlled by the opposing party, Stahl said.

During the public comment period for the new rule, Stahl testified that the proposed action was illegal. "Now we'll go tell a judge the same thing," he said.

Stahl will have company.

"In recent years, the Forest Service has created and widely used a number of categorical exclusions that prevent NEPA review for individual timber sales," said Tim Preso, an EarthJustice attorney based in Bozeman, Mont. "Excluding the forest plans themselves from NEPA review means that a great many of the agency's actions will never receive a hard look at all, at any level of forest management, much less involve the public in a meaningful way."

But Norbury said the provisions of the new Forest Service rule actually increase public participation and provide for more accurate information on cumulative impacts, though it would shorten the time to produce a forest plan to about three years.

Rep. Nick J. Rahall, D-W.Va., who will become the House Resources Committee chairman in the next Congress, said the new rules are part of a continuing effort by the Bush administration to reduce wildlife and watershed protections and make it harder for the public to challenge illegal logging.

NEPA has been a powerful law for conservation groups challenging Bush administration forest policy. A recent federal court ruling that overturned changes to rules banning most logging in inventoried roadless areas cited the lack of environmental impact statement as required by NEPA.

'Analysis paralysis'

U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth and Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey have long complained that NEPA causes lengthy delays in forest planning, timber sales and forest thinning to prevent forest fires n something they've tagged as "analysis paralysis." The Forest Service leaders also complain that they're always getting sued by environmental groups using NEPA, causing expensive delays.

"Too frequently, these processes combine to keep on-the-ground work from ever actually being accomplished, even very small projects or projects of great environmental merit," Bosworth said. "The inability to complete projects can have a detrimental effect on the land."

Aaron Everett, a spokesman for the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, called the current NEPA process a disservice to the public. He said the Forest Service tends to adopt a "siege mentality" when conservationists or logging communities start seeking changes in timber sales or forest plans.

"It doesn't lend itself to a very fluid planning process," said Everett, who witnessed the Black Hills National Forest take 16 years to work through a new forest plan.

Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said the new rule was overdue and likely to be challenged in court by conservationists, as the forest planning regulations issued in 2005 already are.

"NEPA public involvement and detailed analysis needs to be done at the project level where the true consequences to the environment can be assessed," West said. "Wasting time and money, especially court time, on a broad general plan is not in the public interest."

But Rahall and others said excluding forest management plans from NEPA would result in an inability to evaluate cumulative effects on evolving land management decisions.

"These long-term forest plans - not site-specific project decisions - decide which areas will be open to logging, off-road vehicle use, back-country recreation, and other uses," said EarthJustice's Preso. "Also, these plans offer the only opportunity to take a big-picture look at how the entire forest is being managed, instead of the localized look that focuses on a project area alone."

Forest planning

National forests have been preparing 15-year management plans since the 1970s, said Norbury. They once were a list of 15 years' worth of projects, and an environmental impact statement analyzing them.

The Forest Service realized that many of those projects were never done because of changing priorities, and the environmental impact statements were often out of date due to fires, insect infestations and new scientific information, he added.

In 2005, the Bush administration changed the rules, making forest plans more broad-based, focusing on how to improve forest health and restore forests burned by wildfire, rather than individual projects, Norbury said.

About nine of the 125 national forests and national grasslands embark on a new plan every year, and about nine finish them, he said. Plans typically take five to seven years and cost $5 million to $7 million, much of it spent on the environmental impact statement.

The new policy still comes under NEPA, Norbury said. Instead of an environmental impact statement or the lesser environmental analysis, the plans are now covered by a categorical exclusion, a provision of NEPA that says there are no adverse environmental impacts, so no analysis has to be done.