In an effort to stop a project to remove trees in Los Padres National Forest, three conservation groups have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department.
In the lawsuit—filed by Los Padres ForestWatch, the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, and the Center for Biological Diversity—the groups claim the Forest Service ignored data showing that there are roosting sites for the endangered California condor within and near the area where the tree removal is set to take place.
“The idea that they would do this project in the first place is outrageous, but it’s doubly outrageous they are doing this in condor habitat without a real analysis,” said Chad Hanson, ecologist and director of the Join Muir Project.
In April, the Forest Service released a decision memo outlining its plans to remove trees near Tecuya Ridge in the Mount Pinos Ranger District. According to the memo, the purpose of the Tecuya Ridge Shaded Fuelbreak Project is to remove dead or dying trees from a 1,600-acre area to reduce the risk of fires.
The Forest Service declined to comment on the lawsuit, but in the decision memo, Forest Supervisor Kevin Elliott stated that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed with the Forest Service’s findings that the project would not likely adversely affect the California condor.
“I am confident that improving the health and resiliency of forest vegetation within the project area will not imperil species of concern,” Elliott states in the memo.
Los Padres ForestWatch Conservation Director Bryant Baker said the groups disagree with this assessment. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife tracks condors in the wild, and according to this data there are roosting sites within and near the project area, he said.
In addition to not acknowledging this data, the lawsuit also claims the Forest Service improperly used a categorical exclusion to move the project along faster. According to the National Environmental Policy Act, projects can receive categorical exclusion if a federal agency determines the project doesn’t significantly affect environmental resources.
Using this exclusion allows the Forest Service to move forward with the project without completing an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement.
Baker said that because of the potential impact to condors, the Forest Service should have conducted either an assessment or impact statement. Both would have required the Forest Service to look at alternatives to the project, as well as allowed for more public transparency, he said.
The goal of the lawsuit is to force the Forest Service to rethink the project and potentially make adjustments to match to similar ones the service has completed in the past, which have only removed smaller trees and vegetation rather than larger, older trees, Baker said.
“If [the Forest Service] still comes to the conclusion that they want to do some sort of vegetation removal process in these areas,” Baker said, “they need to start where they should have started, which is drafting an environmental assessment at the very least and going through the full [National Environmental Policy Act] process.”
—Zac Ezzone
This article appears in Jul 25 – Aug 1, 2019.