Oops. The last post (comms problems) was number III of discussing the Fennessey interview, and this one is actually IV, and the final one in the series.
I said, well, in many cases, and I’ll just speak about the DOI, it’s a culture of no, you know? And when you ask, well, why not? It’s like we have no money. And that’s not true. That’s not true. It’s all about priorities. And I think when you go through a career, maybe for decades, where the answer is always no, why would I surface any new idea? Why would I step forward and do anything? All they’re going to do is say no, and they’re going to say there’s no money for it. That’s not true.
When I moved from Region 6 to Region 5, I noticed that the Forest Service trucks were dirty where I was. When I asked why, they said “we don’t have the money”, implying that Region 6 could have clean trucks because they had more money. So as Fennessey points out, even in my own non-fire experience, culture is a thing. But back to the “culture of no.”
I’d add something, again, from my experience. It’s not just a “culture of no” but at least these three things (and you can add your own). First, so many people all have to agree to change anything important. I think of it as a long line of toggle switches that all need to be switched on. Only one “off” means that your idea goes nowhere. And with the large centralized shops (say IT or HR) you don’t have the human relationships with the folks working there to give them the encouragement to broach a new idea with their superiors.
Second is a culture (this is FS, I don’t know about Interior) in which trying to make things better can be seen as complaining. And complaining about things that can’t be changed (see 1 above) is bad for morale. I used to say (back to the fleet analogy,) that the culture was if you complain about the tire pressure, you might be put in charge of fleet management. So there was a grumbling aspect (not good for teams) plus a “you point it out, you fix it” aspect.
Third is the existence of “antibodies to change.” If you managed to get past 1 and 2, there is a tendency to go back to the way it was, and again, it only takes one person higher up to squash your innovation.
My example has to do with Service First on the San Juan Public Lands Center. As I recall, the Forest Service and BLM there used dual delegation of the Forest Supe and Deputy (Mark Stiles and Bill Dunkelberger). At one time, we were going to do a joint RMP/Forest Plan (this was finalized in 2013) , and we did do a joint review of the unit between BLM and the FS (I was one of the co-leads, hence my knowledge). As part of the review, we spoke with many members of the public, who were all enthusiastic. And things were going along swimmingly, or so it seemed. One day, as far as I know, they received a phone call from a higher up who said “stop.” I don’t know why, maybe they do, or maybe the people who decided do. What leader would want to put people through the excitement of doing something grand for the land, the people, and the taxpayer, only to have everyone’s hopes crushed by apparently random decisions of higher-ups? Which may have been rooted in power or control issues, who knows?
One side note to all this. Through many parts of Colorado, BLM and FS land is adjacent. And yet, the BLM did various assessments that sounded the same as FS assessments of the same thing. Why couldn’t they a joint assessment using the same variables measured the same way? Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a joint Interior/FS team nationally that looked at “things we could do together and save bucks?” Plenty of that goes on locally, but does anyone look at that more broadly?
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Circling back to the wildland fire organization, in this THW interview with Dan Kleinman, Kleinman notes that there was an experiment with siloed wildfire people in the FS, which gradually changed back. Apparently the antibodies were at work again, or maybe there is a document somewhere that says it was an experiment that didn’t work? Kleinman is the Chair of the Alliance of Retired Forest Service Fire Leaders. I couldn’t find their website, but here is info about them from THW.
And I didn’t know this until early on, but there’s a DOI system in each one of them and there’s a Forest Service system in each one of them. And they don’t talk to each other. And it’s like, are you kidding me? How long has this gone?
Oh, this has gone on for decades. And, you know, we’re still working off a copper wire in some of this stuff. I mean, we are decades behind when it comes to IT infrastructure, what your local fire department would have. I mean, if the local fire department in San Diego or Boise or Orange County, you name the place,
if they had the same systems that the feds are operating under, people would be outraged. It’s not uncommon for systems to fail. What do we do as firefighters? Oh, we figure out how to work around. Right? And pretty soon we do that enough and that just becomes our norm.
Do we want to invest in two systems or do we want to invest in one system?
Well, my thought would be that (bear with me, now, I know this is really out there) that two departments could use the same system! Not that I’m arguing either way, but just because it’s always been done that way, doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. Imagine the two Secretaries sitting down with their heads of IT. “Look,” they say “this is ridiculous; you get your heads together and figure something out that works. If there’s a reason you can’t, bring it to us immediately. You have until next fire season.”
The Hotshot Wakeup also went through some of the comms related issues that happened this year. From the transcript of that podcast.:
In my previous episode with the Director of the United States Wildland Fire Service, Brian Fennessy, one of our conversations that we had was about the dispatch system across the United States. And I had a couple people reach out and say, hey, what does that mean though? What’s going on with that? You guys say it’s aged and decrepit.
How does that affect operations? I’ve covered it a few times on the show, going through some reports that have kind of displayed some examples of what exactly that means. And so just quickly, I pulled up, what do we have? One, two, three, four, five different reports. Safety reports that were issued in the last month.
So this is all within the last 30 days from dispatches around the nation talking about the issues that they’re having and just kind of paints a better picture. Of what the dispatch centers are dealing with. And some of these I’ve talked about before, but I’ll give a more concise, clear picture of what they’re dealing with here.
The first one and the most recent comes out of California. And I believe it’s where we at. Yeah, the San Bernardino operating area. And they’re discussing the… Dispatch Center there. It says, on August 26, I was working at the fire lab in Riverside, California. I received notification that the Forest Service Supervisor’s Office
in San Bernardino was operating on generator power since October of 2025. And I’ve discussed this incident before. They’ve been off-grid. It says they then had experienced a catastrophic generator failure and they were running on generator power at this center. It says as a result, both the Forest Service and
the United States Wildland Fire Service dispatch centers activated their continuity of operations plan, relying on a much smaller generator to maintain essential radio communications. So major dispatch center and operating center. Relying on a pull start generator, it seems like, because their main generator looks like failed. It says since they switched to that smaller generator, they’ve seen minor failures and intermittent outages across multiple radio channels. Persistent concerns about reliability of the planned generator, with the possibility of its failure looming, ongoing operational risks for dispatch centers which depend on uninterrupted radio communications to coordinate fire and law enforcement personnel. It goes on to say this issue has persisted for over a year.
We’re seeing minimal progress. And they say, hey, there’s personnel safety issues, saying the reliability of radio communications is critical for the safety of fire and law enforcement personnel. A catastrophic generator failure could force the dispatch center to shut down. Operational continuity. Warning that if the other generator goes out, they will have a complete and total communication blackout.
And then talks about leadership response and saying, hey, this has been going on for a year. What the hell’s going on to try to fix this thing? It says the ongoing generator. Generator and radio equipment failures represent a serious hazard to personnel and operations, saying that a Bureau of Land Management generator is currently running to keep essential radios and functions for dispatch to remain operational. So that’s one example to kind of give you a heads up. That was in California.
The next one out of Wyoming, it says on August 21st, the Cody Interagency Dispatch Center phones and radios became non-functional after
the staff in the dispatch center worked quickly to get their computers connected to some sort of Wi-Fi to connect to the WildCAD functionality system. At 10 o’clock, a text message was sent via that system to the Cody resources to inform them the phones and radios were down and cell phone numbers were provided to reach expanded dispatch.
And the main dispatch center. Multiple radio checks were tested and the only successful one were on the BLM Copper Mountain repeaters in the Wyoming Link repeater. A Forest Service radio ticket was submitted to see if the issue could be fixed quickly and or remotely. As well as a Department of Interior phone ticket for the main dispatch lines.
We also tried radio tests from the Casper Dispatch Center on the Continuity of Operations computer and were unable to reach field resources with that. The problem is still ongoing. We’ve had multiple smoke checks with a few requesting aircraft and no way of reaching resources. So that one’s Wyoming. As you can see, it’s kind of widespread.
I already talked about this one. This was up in Montana, saying that Missoula Dispatch Center lost all functionality for incoming phone calls on center landlines. This issue is promptly reported as a critical need through the proper channels, but it has been more than 24 hours. Our lines are still not working.
This report I talked about maybe three weeks ago. So I assume this problem has been fixed, but I bring it up again to talk about Some of the questions you had of, hey, what do you mean by our dispatch centers are not working properly?
It goes on to say they were managing multiple incidents when the system failure happened. The next one, Sequoia National Forest out in California, the report, again, I’ve touched on this one, but just to give you an idea, it says, during normal forest operations over the past several weeks, the Sequoia National Forest has experienced a significant decline in radio communication reliability. Although radio technicians have informed us that efforts are ongoing to resolve the communication issues with the Central California Interagency Communication Center, radio performance has not improved to a level that allows Forest Service field personnel to consistently communicate with dispatch. Another one out of Wyoming, this one out of the Casper jurisdiction, it says.
So I wanted to quickly bring that up because there were a couple questions of like, hey, How bad is it? And just off those five little examples there, the people who run these facilities and these dispatch centers say it’s a major, major problem.
For a long time, the technology was not there to fix these things. And yet I doubt our military has the same kinds of comms issues (maybe they do) even working in foreign countries. Yes, I get it, fire folks are absolutely brilliant at work-arounds. Yet something seems to be broken in the “identifying and fixing problems” systems, and it’s not the identifying part.
This seems to me like a great topic for a reporter to look into more deeply. And maybe one of our wildland firefighter organizations could get the ball rolling with a press release? “No more” says X, president of Firefighters For Improvement of Working Conditions “this season has shown the dangers to our firefighters. In this country, leaders in technologies, we believer that there is no reason and we can do better. We call on the Trump Administration and the federal wildfire agencies to strike now, before next fire season, to fix this so every firefighter has communication access in to a reliable dispatch system with 21st century technology. Wildland firefighters put their lives on the line and deserve the best that this country can provide!”
I’m trying to approach this thing kind of from a balanced perspective. And I’m told at our first IMT meeting that, no, you know what, Chief? No, there are contract resources available. And the limiting factors is this middle management. Like middle management? Now middle management means something different depending on I know it does in the structural world and it does. I say, well, what do you mean middle management? Well, you know, there’s folks at the task force leader level and they’re describing this, that we, the government, have a gap there. And that, you know, these are the folks that go out with some of the contract crews or whatever to make sure that, you know, they’re complying or that there’s safeties in whatever it may be. And there’s a bunch of resources available, but we don’t have the ability To put middle managers on it. Some of it because we train them and then very quickly they get moved up to strike team leader or some other thing.
I’m like, well, whoa, that’s news to me. So there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of contractors that could be doing this work, but they’re not doing it because we are the limiting factor. You know, fast forward to Washington. Before we got to Washington, again, Chief Fisher and I Meeting with the Army Colonel out of Pentagon, he comes to visit NIFC and myself and Russ Long from the force. Russ is managing that program. Amazing. Russ Long is an amazing individual, great firefighter. Anyways, he introduces folks and they’re getting near the end of their 30-day mission. And he says something to the effect that, you know, If things were to keep on, we probably could come up with another battalion. And I think a battalion is 240. I don’t know. It’s a lot of people. But it doesn’t sound like you guys have the ability. Basically, you talk about middle managers to manage that. And I think we saw weather on the horizon.
So it wasn’t like, but it’s twice now that I’m hearing, wait a minute, there’s a limitation here that I was unaware of. And, you know, I’ve looked at Sarah (Fisher, of the Forest Service) and she’s looked at me and said, we got to do something about this. I don’t know that it’s, publicly tolerable to be able to say that there are resources available, but we, the government, do not have the qualified people in place to take care of it. Now, I say that, I take a big risk in saying that because, again, I’m somewhat the new guy.
Then I received this guest post from Dana Tibbitts of the National Wildfire Alliance. I’m not a fire person, but perhaps the Rogue Siskiyou Regional Wildfire Training Center could be part of the solution to the capacity problem?
THE STORY OF TWO FIRES: HOW AMERICA LEARNED TO IMPORT WILDFIRE CAPACITY—AT WHAT PRICE?
We have become remarkably adept at delivering the workforce—and the funding—after the crisis begins. RSR gives us the opportunity to build the solution before the fire comes.
So what are we waiting for?
Little Giant Fire spreads toward cabins, towns in Washington Cascades
THE STORY OF TWO FIRES: HOW AMERICA LEARNED TO IMPORT WILDFIRE CAPACITY—AT WHAT PRICE?
We have become remarkably adept at delivering the workforce—and the funding—after the crisis begins. RSR gives us the opportunity to build the solution before the fire comes.
So what are we waiting for?
If anyone wants to understand America’s wildfire workforce equation in crisis, look at two fires burning this summer in Washington and Oregon.
Lightning started Washington’s Little Giant Fire July 15 in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. By September 17, it had grown to 172,814 acres, one of the largest fires of Washington’s tempestuous 2026 season. Little Giant required an extraordinary mobilization: the National Interagency Fire Center deployed approximately 250 active-duty soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord to support wildfire suppression, with the soldiers moving to Little Giant on August 20.
And Little Giant was only part of the problem. Oregon’s Rowe Creek Complex ultimately reached 373,927 acres. Put the two together and the scale comes into focus: two states, two enormous incidents, 546,741 acres within their fire footprints, and thousands of people mobilized—crews, engines, aircraft, heavy equipment, incident management teams and military personnel. Some are coming from farther and farther away.
Moving the Shortage
This summer the United States requested wildfire assistance from Australia and New Zealand. The first contingent brought 74 fire-management specialists, including a 15-person Incident Management Team. A second wave brought another 240 specialists, for a total of 314 assigned across the Northwest and Great Basin.
These are not bargain-basement firefighters brought in because America can find cheaper labor overseas. They are experienced professionals, and they are coming because America needs their qualifications. Mutual aid is fundamental to wildfire response: a quiet region helps a busy one, states help one another, and America’s international partners help us—as we help them.
That system saves lives. The question is why, year after year, we have to call for reinforcements as though adequate fireline staffing can be delivered on demand.
There is a significant difference between mutual aid providing surge capacity during an extraordinary emergency and a system becoming dependent upon moving scarce qualifications around the country—and eventually around the world—to fill predictable gaps. We have become remarkably adept at moving the shortage. Perhaps it is time we became equally serious about fixing it.
The Real Shortage
Because the shortage isn’t simply firefighters. America does not merely have a firefighter shortage. We have a qualification and command deficit.
Anyone who has spent a career in wildland fire understands the distinction. We can hire seasonal firefighters, buy engines, contract aircraft and deploy sophisticated technology. But none of it substitutes for qualified people who can lead firefighters, supervise equipment, manage divisions, run operations and command complex incidents.
Those people cannot be manufactured during an emergency. A beginning firefighter does not become a crew boss overnight, and a crew boss does not suddenly become a division supervisor, operations chief or incident commander. The profession is built upon qualifications, field experience, mentorship and judgment accumulated over years. When that pipeline becomes too thin, crews cannot deploy without qualified supervision, equipment may lack people qualified to lead it, and technology cannot substitute for command.
A fire engine without a qualified leader is a parked fire engine. In the middle of a wildfire emergency, it might as well be in the boneyard.
Qualifications Travel. Local Knowledge Does Not
There is another part of this equation those who fight wildfire understand instinctively: qualifications travel; local knowledge does not. A firefighter arriving from another state may be superbly qualified. An Australian incident manager may bring decades of experience. But neither arrives carrying intimate knowledge of a Washington drainage network or an Oregon backroad system—the prevailing winds, communications dead zones, escape routes, water sources or peculiarities of a particular piece of Western terrain.
That is not an argument against mutual aid, but a strong case for maintaining a deeper regional bench in the American West.
And that brings us back to Oregon. While America spends astronomical sums delivering wildfire capacity after fires begin, a project designed to build that capacity before the next fire has spent nearly eight years trying to cross the funding finish line.
Build the Bench
The Rogue Siskiyou Regional Wildfire Training Center—RSR—is not simply an Oregon project. It is potentially part of the larger answer to a Western workforce crisis.
RSR has organized as a nonprofit, secured a 31.5-acre former lumber-mill site near Gold Beach, completed environmental and planning work, acquired equipment and generated millions in regional support. At full capacity, it is designed to train approximately 1,600 people annually, building a professional pipeline from entry-level training through crew leadership, supervision, operations, management and ultimately command.
And those people do not belong to Gold Beach. They become part of a much larger Western wildfire workforce. They can fight fire in Oregon, reinforce Washington or deploy elsewhere as national mobilization requires. The point is not to eliminate movement between states; it is to build a deeper reservoir of qualified Western personnel from which the mutual-aid system can draw.
By incorporating hazardous-fuels reduction, forest restoration and other off-season land-management work, RSR offers more than seasonal training. It offers year-round workforce development, accumulated experience and professional advancement—the things required to produce tomorrow’s supervisors, operations leaders and commanders.
And then We Come to the Money
Here is where America’s wildfire workforce equation becomes very difficult to explain.
Rowe Creek ultimately burned 373,927 acres, with its last reported estimated suppression cost reaching approximately $120.7 million—or about $323 per acre.
Then there is Little Giant. As of September 17, the fire had reached 172,814 acres, with estimated suppression costs of approximately $162.7 million—about $941 per acre.
Two fires. 546,741 acres. Approximately $283.4 million spent fighting them.
Now put another number beside that: $37 million.
That is the current estimated capital cost of building the entire RSR facility—a permanent investment with the capacity to train approximately 1,500 wildfire professionals every year, from entry-level firefighters through crew leadership, supervision, operations, management and command.
In other words, the estimated suppression cost of these two fires alone is more than seven and a half times the projected cost of building RSR.
Nobody is suggesting that a training center would have prevented Little Giant or Rowe Creek, or that $37 million invested in training infrastructure would make catastrophic wildfire—or the enormous expense of fighting it—disappear. That isn’t the comparison. The comparison is between what America is willing to spend reactively once fires become major incidents, and what we struggle to invest proactively in permanent capacity before the fire comes, as it inevitably will.
We will spend hundreds of millions fighting major fires, move firefighters across the continent, activate the military, fly highly qualified wildfire specialists across the Pacific, and sustain enormous incident organizations for weeks or months. And then we struggle to assemble $37 million for permanent infrastructure capable of building the very workforce and leadership capacity we are scrambling to find.
There is something fundamentally backwards about that equation.
Where is the Capacity, Continuity and Will to Put Out the Fire?
The West does not need new ways to put more fire on the land, more symposiums explaining that wildfire is a problem, or repeated reminders that the workforce is strained. The people running these fires already know. What they need is capacity, continuity and experience—and the institutional will to build and sustain them. Above all, they need command: command that will “first put out the fire.”
RSR is not an alternative to America’s mutual-aid system. Quite the opposite. Build RSR so mutual aid can remain what it was intended to be: surge capacity—not a recurring answer to predictable workforce and qualification shortages.
Because we are already paying for the shortage—in aircraft hours and engine miles, mobilization and demobilization, military deployments, and personnel moved thousands of miles from one incident to another. We pay for it when experienced wildfire professionals must be flown across an ocean because our own system needs their qualifications. Above all, we pay when there simply aren’t enough experienced people available where and when they are needed.
We are living inside the hole created by yesterday’s failures.
Little Giant and Rowe Creek reveal the same underlying problem: the people fighting these fires need a deeper bench behind them. The national mobilization system is telling us what it needs, and the fires are telling us what it costs when that capacity falls short. Meanwhile, in southern Oregon, a project specifically designed to build that capacity is waiting—strengthening the national system while putting trained personnel and rapid-response capacity closer to the communities that need them.
The Choice: Fish or Cut Bait
At what point does delay become prevarication—a choice without accountability for the staggering consequences to the beautiful landscapes of Chelan County, Washington, now laid waste at enormous cost to taxpayers?
Failure to fund RSR is not the absence of a decision. It is a decision to continue paying for the shortage instead of building the capacity to fix it.
Government has developed an insanely expensive habit of using our taxpayer dollars without limit once disaster arrives, while becoming skittish about investing a fraction of that amount to build readiness before the fire comes.
That equation has to change, before there is nothing left to burn.
Build the workforce. Build the leadership. Build the command capacity.
If we are serious about wildfire readiness, build RSR. Now.
The National Wildfire Alliance has formalized a partnership with the Rogue Siskiyou Regional Wildfire Training Center to support and advance RSR as a regional wildfire workforce and command-capacity resource.
The National Wildfire Alliance is a nonprofit public-interest organization working to improve wildfire policy, forest stewardship, suppression effectiveness, public accountability and regional firefighting capacity. NWA brings together wildfire professionals, researchers, landowners and public advocates to advance practical solutions that protect forests, communities and the people who defend them.
Dana Tibbitts is an author and investigative journalist specializing in wildfire risk, evacuation safety, and government accountability. She is co-founder with her husband of the Tahoe East Shore Alliance and serves on the Board of the National Wildfire Alliance. Dana is also co-author of Harnessing the Sky.
Sources
National Interagency Fire Center, “National Fire News,” August 26 and August 31, 2026. National Preparedness Level 5; national incident and personnel statistics.
National Interagency Fire Center, “Military Support,” updated August 31, 2026. Active-duty U.S. Army support from Joint Base Lewis-McChord and deployment to the Little Giant Fire.
Central Oregon Fire Information, “Rowe Creek Complex / August 15, 2026.” Official acreage 373,784; 1,318 personnel; 89% containment.
Oregon State Fire Marshal, “Oregon State Fire Marshal resources demobilize from Rowe Creek Complex as containment reaches 89 percent,” August 18, 2026.
National Interagency Fire Center, “International Support — 2026 Australia and New Zealand mobilization.” 74-person first contingent, including a 15-person Incident Management Team; 240-person second wave; Northwest and Great Basin assignments.
Washington State Standard / Oregon Public Broadcasting, “Cost to battle 20 wildfires in Washington has topped $200M,” August 19, 2026. Washington DNR data showing $207 million in firefighting costs for 20 fires in roughly one month.
RSR project materials supplied by the author: site, project history, training-capacity model and current estimated $37 million capital cost.
Mostly litigants get to read our emails when we work for the Feds; it’s kind of fun that reporter Joshua Siegel got a copy of a transcript of litigatorily inclined ENGOs discussing the permitting bill..and intending to keep the strategy from Senators Whitehouse and Heinrich. It was considered by Hartl of CBD to be a “betrayal”- I’m sympathetic, as FS thinking and documents were regularly leaked to ENGOs in my time. Sauce for the goose and all that.
At the outset of the call, Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, stressed he wanted to keep their tactics a secret from Democratic negotiators Sens. Whitehouse and Heinrich, who are both allies of the environmental movement.
I guess it’s a bit of a battle for the title of “Who Counts as The Environmental Movement”. What I think it most interesting about it, and some of the takes I’ve read from law profs, is the idea that some environmental federal impacts to the environment and species are worth it (renewables) and others aren’t. Interesting how people who work with words and not things can arrive at conclusions about trade-offs.
I think there may be three separate ways of looking at it.
1. Don’t build anything (on federal land, for sure and maybe elsewhere- also forest management and grazing are suspect). What CBD lacks in practicality, they make up for in consistency.
II.There’s stuff “we” like and stuff we don’t like. Presidents pulling permits is OK for stuff we don’t like, but really, really bad for stuff we do like. The funny thing to me is that I’m not sure that anyone ever made a list of stuff they like, and stuff they don’t like and why, exactly. It’s interesting when you frame it that way.. there are trade-offs of course, but the pros and cons of various trade-offs and their associated uncertainties seldom enter the discussion of whether correct NEPA procedures have been followed in the courtroom. I’m not sure about the list (who decided) and how many of these groups agree on the details.
III. We know there are trade-offs, but we do need to build for various reasons, and the rules should be clearer and more straightforward, verging on technology-neutral. Communities need to be involved and not overridden. Technologies used to reduce impacts. Alternatives looked at. People knowledgeable about that work involved in hashing it out.. not optimally in a courtroom.
The political argument seems to be that if they wait, they can get a solution that encourages their favored projects, and discourages their disfavored projects. Meanwhile, local environmental groups tend to be against both kinds of new projects. And many ENGOs (not as litigatorily inclined) seem to be sitting this one out, or at least aren’t as vociferously against it.
Eric of Western Environmental Law Center said this at 12:21:19
One thing I’d note and relative to the prior comment about certainty, but then I think we should think about the judicial review provisions in conjunction with those certainty provisions, because essentially what this bill does is it hamstrings our ability to go after projects, and then it hamstrings the ability of any future president. to go after projects. And the problem with this is that this is a narrative framing component that I think we need to be really careful about because proponents of the bill are arguing that this empowers a future progressive administration to unleash clean energy and innovation. Really what it does is it just abdicates the responsibility of the federal government to set a direction for energy policy and then cedes that authority to the market because we won’t be able to challenge projects and a future administration will not be able to challenge anything that is in fact. Permitted during the pendency of the Trump administration, which is going to create an incentive for all these data centers and fossil fuel companies to rush through a process, hoard leases, permits and authorizations, and then basically tell a future administration to go fly a kite. And then, meanwhile, many of the regulatory tools that a new president would have, not just via NEPA, but ESA, Clean Water Act, National Historic Preservation Act. Those authorities for a new administration to tilt the scales in favor of renewables have gone away. And so I think a framing component for this has to be this isn’t about empowering a future administration.
This is about empowering tech, energy and finance. to do what they want, damn whatever a future president in 2029 wants to do to actually transition from fossil fuels to renewables. So there’s a legal component there on the judicial review and certainty provisions, but a really critical narrative component that we need to push back on.
It seems to me that it doesn’t “abdicate the responsibility of the federal government”, it actually permanentizes preferences of different elected officials because things can’t be unpermitted later. I know, some things should be permanentized (e.g. Monuments that they like) and others not. ”
It seems like these groups are negotiating the tension between renewable build out- which they consider to be good, and the fact that their power to get their preferred outcomes tends to reside in “no”. If they loosen the “no’s” other people can use the “no’s” against their preferred projects- apparently renewables and transmission?
Anyway, we can expect to see theses groups’ arguments and quotes in the media; it will be interesting to see how different outlets report the pros and cons of the legislation. I can’t help but think that some of this debate may help pass FOFA, since some of the FOFA’s NEPA/litigation provisions were a hang=up to some groups and their Congressional allies.
Whoops, this section should have gone with the previous post, quote from Fennessey (all quotes are from the transcript on the THW substack)
I remember when the district office would empty when there was a fire on the district or on the forest. I mean, everybody grabbed a tool, grabbed a yellow shirt, and went out there. And, you know, you didn’t know that the district ranger was a hell of a firefighter.
You know, the forest supervisor was a hell of a firefighter. Well, you know, over time, that’s changed. That’s not what it is today anymore. They’re still… You know, line officers that are amazing firefighters. I don’t want to take anything away from that. But the guys I used to work with, you know, the Joe Stutlers.
I think about Ray Quintanar. I mean, there’s all these names in my head that, man, were just incredible line officers and firefighters. Well, it’s not like that anymore. And it just is the way it is. And, you know, when it comes to public safety, And decisions need to be made as it affects communities, infrastructure, lives.
For me, again, this coming from a firefighter that’s been doing this for 48 years, 25% of those years as a fire chief, that needs to land on the fire service. We need to be responsible. We need to be held accountable for lives, property, and infrastructure.
And I don’t think it’s fair to the line officers that have to take that responsibility because they’re filling that position. I think it is time for a change. And I do see where one agency just makes a lot of sense. Will it be smooth? Will it be easy? No. Are we laying the framework now?
And have we shown that, hey, look, this can be done? Absolutely. Tim, how many people did you hear say, well, if the Department of Interior does this, who’s going to be spending the time on the landscape? You cannot detach these firefighters from the landscape. Nobody has. Nobody has. And should the Forest Service firefighters, should Congress decide to move them over and there be one agency, it’s the same thing. People’s offices aren’t going anywhere. Those same firefighters are going to be doing the work on the landscape. And I think it’s scale. I think when the budget for the firefighters… It’s moved over. And if you look at the FY27 budget today, that’s where it is, is we’re going to do a lot more work at scale on the landscape. And man, it’s got to be, I keep saying at scale, 24-7. We’ve got a long road ahead of us. But that’s what it’s going to take. Can we do that with two separate agencies? I suppose we could.
I’m suspicioning that someone has asked and answered the set of question we might have. Who is going to do project planning for fuels and prescribed fire- the same bureau people who do it now? How will that work, if charge as worked, then USFWS will have to pay them for that work for fuels projects. Even more potentially confusing, though, is what about mixed purpose projects? Let’s take a thin and underburn.. would have fuel goals but also forest health goals and maybe timber. How to proportion the funding? If some folks wanted to negotiate out important units or change prescription to suit some publics, would the fuels folks be able to say “hey if you don’t do x, we’re not funding it?” Maybe those aren’t questions on the Interior side, but seem relevant to the “should the FS fire folks move?” discussion.
It’s too hard to get projects through.. too many competing priorities. Again, not sure that these are relevant to Interior, except I have seen BLM fuels projects hung up in litigation.
But.. what if.. the USWFS had its own project planning shop? My former boss, Fred Norbury, used to say that he thought the FS NEPA planning should operate more like a NIKE factory but then operated as a set of cobbler shops. We can imagine all kinds of AI helped documents; when a court case came down, all ongoing documents could immediately be tagged for updating.. Perhaps even (wildfire is a national security issue!) a separate set of DOJ litigators focused on fuels projects, with continuous feedback to the NEPA factory. Maybe all housed in the same building. Of course, local folks would review and do the fieldwork, but at the end of the day the analysis is a document. For example, a case where a judge determines that an air quality model is controversial, everyone working could automatically switch. Lawyers (and apparently, judges) already use AI.. so…according to Reuters..
An Oklahoma judge has acknowledged that a ruling he issued contained fictitious citations generated by artificial intelligence, according to state records, adding to a growing number of cases in which judges have faced scrutiny over AI use.
The judge, Lawrence Wheeler of the District Court of Stephens County, told an investigator with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation that he used OpenAI’s ChatGPT for research, and that an order he drafted contained two citations to cases that do not exist, according to an August 17 letter from a prosecutor to the state attorney general’s office.
It’s a new world out there, and maybe fire folks, just like they have the best tech, could have the best litigation and project planning shop.
One story, as many of you know, I came to planning from silviculture. When someone in silviculture found something out, we wrote it down and shared the document. We also had forest, area, and regional training. We had certification through CEFES and SI.
When I started to work with litigation, the advice was never written down because “the other side might get hold of it and learn our strategy.” This was no doubt true as some folks on our side seemed to think that sharing with the other side was a good thing to do, because the other side was right and we were wrong. When I was in DC, my boss asked me (and JR) to write a paper for the NEPA folks on “when NEPA applies.” No OGC attorney wanted to write things down because they felt each case is special (which it is). Finally one of the OGC folks helped us out and we published the document. Why am I telling these stories? Because the continuous learning process from NEPA through appeals/objections (that part worked OK) to litigation did not work as effectively as it might have. I hope it is greatly different nowadays. But it would be interesting for the USWFS and its contractor base to take a run at the process and see what they could do. When we worked with e-NEPA as part of E-gov (PALS was part of that effort) our contractor talked about the culture of how the FS does NEPA, but that was too heavy of a lift for us. Perhaps it’s worth the USWFS doing a pilot experiment. What if folks used all the tools currently at their disposal? What if litigators, Solicitors, and project planners directly communicated differently and frequently? Even a review of how things are working in the project planning to litigation assembly line.. by some outside folks, might be helpful.
In Fennessey’s terminology, “Does accomplishing the mission require changes to how we do business?”
I recommend listening to The Hotshot Wakeup’s interview with USWFS Chief Brian Fennessey last Friday. There’s nothing like hearing directly from the horse’s mouth. As we thanked the fire workforce a few weeks agao, he also attributes the success of this fire season to the workforce.. despite the challenges of a low snowpack and organizational changes, they pulled it off.
Take the mission and carry it out as best they can. And we feel like they did that. And in some cases, like I say, it was just unbelievable. The feedback I’ve gotten from type I CIMTs on how great it was to be sitting at the agency administrative briefing and looking another firefighter in the eye.
That doesn’t mean the line officer wasn’t there sharing resource values at risk and those sorts of things, but how well that went. Now, there’s occasions where we may have new FMOs, unit chiefs, where maybe that didn’t go as smoothly as it needed to. Not a surprise.
But the fact that there was so much fire on Department of Interior dirt this year, where we got to really exercise what this new organization was going to be like, and the fact that All of the horror stories that we heard in the winter and spring, what was going to happen and woe is me, none of that happened, I think speaks to the firefighters that are out there doing the job. We asked a lot of them, Tim. I mean, we asked them not only to continue to be FMOs and fire managers, but we asked them to be fire administrators too. And we didn’t give them much support.
There wasn’t much to give at the time other than get through the season and You know, as best we could. And so we’re feeling pretty good about that, but at the same time understanding that we got a lot of work ahead of us as well.
Previously, THW had covered about some internal tension going on in the Forest Service wildfire space, with some folks supportive of the new organization, and other folks highly worried about the FS wildfire folks going over.
There were four areas specifically that Fennessey touched on that I want to engage with.1, Line officers’ authorities and budgets 2 What stays and what goes with USWFS in terms of project planning and litigation. 3.Why agencies can have a culture of “no”, and what happened to Service First? and 4. Communication problems and the broader issue of why problems don’t get fixed. As always, you are invited to listen and bring up your own topics from the interview.
I thought that this was interesting
But yeah, nine months, nine and a half months in, and it’s been one heck of a ride. Yeah. I’m just learning a ton, enjoying the heck out of it, being around firefighters and the energy and enthusiasm that so many of them have. We have a weekly staff meeting, not just my executive team,
but all the geographic area fire chiefs and the exec team. There’s probably 40, 50 people on this call every Thursday that goes for a couple hours and These are the leaders of the organization and getting honest feedback on what’s working and maybe what’s not.
I think the last show we talked about the cultural coalition that we have going, which is an internal group being facilitated by Mission Center Solutions and others that is bringing feedback from the field, from those that are living it every day and putting it right in front of us.
I don’t know if other parts of Interior and the FS have a similar process. For sure, in my experience, folks will tell things to third parties they won’t tell their bosses.
I’ll start with what he said about line officers being equals and not superiors.
Take the mission and carry it out as best they can. And we feel like they did that. And in some cases, like I say, it was just unbelievable. The feedback I’ve gotten from type I CIMTs on how great it was to be sitting at the agency administrative briefing and looking another firefighter in the eye.
That doesn’t mean the line officer wasn’t there sharing resource values at risk and those sorts of things, but how well that went. Now, there’s occasions where we may have new FMOs, unit chiefs, where maybe that didn’t go as smoothly as it needed to. Not a surprise.
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But back to your original question, I would say give it a chance. I think those, many of the doubters on the DOI side would tell you today that, you know, they got it wrong. Actually, it makes sense and it’s working. I would tell the line officers to talk to the DOI line officers. Yeah, was it perfect?
Probably not. But hey, we’re all in this together. We cannot do this without the line officers. They cannot do it without us. It’s all about partnerships and relationships. And the nonsense that goes on in between is just that. It’s nonsense.
Budget- Are Other Folks Dipping Into the Fire Budget?
I heard that for years too, even like I said, when I worked in the 70s and 80s. And I kind of, again, I don’t, Know this, but from my perspective, it’s like, listen, if you’re any federal agency and you feel like you’ve been underfunded for years, I mean, you figure out a way to work around that, right?
And I think over the decades, you know, that’s occurred. I mean, I attended the Hotshot, a portion of the Hotshot superintendent steering committee, I believe it was in Boise, you know, my first, second, third month, whatever, up there and I remember one of the superintendents describing how they believe that the budget process went, and I think there’s 60, 70, Forest Service hotshot crews, and that the piece of pie was cut evenly, so they each got their equal piece of the pie, but when it finally got down to them, many times there was no pie, or there was very little pie left, and this and that, and you ask, well, what happens?
And I think… Nobody’s necessarily doing anything quote unquote wrong. They’re just doing what’s been done for many years. You know, they’re funding, potentially positions are being funded, projects are being funded out of fire that maybe weren’t intended for that. On the DOI side, we’ve been really clear about it. It’s like, look, because it’s all coming through us, even the prescribed fire monies or fuel treatment funding, you know, we will make sure that, you know, firefighters are doing, you know, fire Related work and not non-fire work. I mean, the public is expecting us to, you know, to spend it that way. Again, to the degree that, again.
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So, other than when I worked in reforestation and genetics on forests, I was always an “off the top” funded person in the RO and WO. In the RO, my budget came from the programs who did most projects and had most appeals and litigation through some kind of formula. In the WO probably the same for the NEPA staff. What Fennessey seems to be talking about is “charge as worked” for primary fire folks, thinking that they have enough work on their own (perhaps) that they don’t need to do others’ work (whether funded by them or not?) not clear. So it’s almost like there are two areas of concern… how wildfire funding gets to the ground and who else should rightfully get a chunk, and the charge as worked question. Since I don’t understand how Interior does or doesn’t do charge as worked, that part is confusing to me.
Next post.. where do USWFS and the bureaus meet in terms of project planning, NEPA and litigation?
What’s in permitting reform bill.. he read it so (maybe) we don’t have to. Tom Hochman of the Foundation for American Innovation is one of my favorite young people working on permitting (I call them the “permitting bros”- young and enthusiastic (not old and jaded). Here’s what he says about the NEPA provisions (remember the bros come at this from mostly an energy focus, all our forest veg management drama is little more than footnote in their magnum opus.
Briefings, walk-throughs, and the good old DC rumor mill have started to surface details over the last few weeks, but finally, today, the whole text is out. The bill, dubbed the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, is a whopper – at more than 400 pages, it makes the 170-page Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (EPRA) look piddling in comparison. It represents a tremendous effort by members and staff on the Hill and in the White House, with particular credit to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) and Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee
Hochman has sections on other topics, but here is the NEPA and associated litigation section of his review.
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National Environmental Policy Act
As long-suffering permitting reform wonks know, NEPA was always going to be central to negotiations. It is the “Magna Carta of federal environmental laws” and the most heavily litigated permitting statute, and it has played a starring role in the slow-walking and cancellation of energy projects for more than half a century. (For some data points on the NEPA burden, check out NEPAstats.)
NEPA is burdensome for three main reasons. First, breadth: NEPA review is triggered by any “major federal action”, which has been interpreted to mean just about any federal action, from picnics to federal hiring. Second, the scope of review: NEPA has traditionally required analysis not just of the direct and proximate effects of an action, but also of effects that are “later in time or farther removed in distance” and “cumulative” in nature, creating exceptionally open-ended requirements for agencies. The Supreme Court’s Seven County decision has narrowed this considerably, but the ruling still leaves plenty of room for litigants to test its limits. Third, litigation: NEPA’s breadth and scope make it exceptionally easy to find a hook for a lawsuit. The consequence of NEPA litigation, even when unsuccessful, is immense. Plaintiffs can seek a preliminary injunction that halts a project while the case plays out, causing projects to stall for years or be abandoned altogether. And when agencies do lose in court, the remedy can be remand with vacatur, meaning that the agency’s approval is thrown out and the project is blocked until the agency redoes its analysis – often a years-long process.
On breadth, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (henceforth BAAJA) narrows the definition of major federal action (MFA) such that fewer projects trigger NEPA in the first place. Specifically:
“Lifeline infrastructure”, including telecommunications infrastructure, transmission lines, pipelines, and beyond, is not an MFA for various repair and replacement activities.
Receipt of federal loans or grants (think the “federal financial assistance” trigger) generally does not, by itself, make an activity an MFA, subject to limited exceptions.
Many transmission and pipeline activities within existing rights-of-way are no longer MFAs.
Certain USACE environmental projects with a federal cost share of up to $50 million are not MFAs.
On scope, BAAJA bolsters the Seven County decision, reaffirming NEPA’s procedural nature and requiring that courts reviewing NEPA claims must afford substantial deference to agency decisionmaking.
And now for the big stuff: litigation.
First, BAAJA changes the statute of limitations for NEPA lawsuits from six years to 150 days. This is pretty standard fare, and will not meaningfully limit plaintiffs’ ability to participate in lawsuits, but will bring more certainty to project sponsors.
Second, in order to bring a lawsuit, plaintiffs must allege “direct harm” and, where there was a public comment period, must have submitted a comment specific enough to put the agency on notice of the issue they’re suing over. In other words, they must give the agency an opportunity to address any alleged defects before reaching the courts.
Third and most importantly, injunctions and vacatur are eliminated outright for NEPA-specific claims. These remedies are, of course, preserved when the violation involves an underlying statute such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, including when those violations are challenged through the APA. The logic for Republicans and Democrats alike is that purely procedural statutes such as NEPA do not create substantive environmental protections, and thus ought not result in project-stopping litigation.
This represents a sea change in the NEPA status quo, and is a truly exciting development. Without the threat of a project-killing injunction or vacatur, NEPA lawsuits lose most of their value as a delay tactic – and agencies will likely limit the “litigation-proofing” of NEPA documents that has driven much of the ballooning page lengths and review timelines over the years.
In return, two new requirements have been added to NEPA. First, BAAJA requires project sponsors to submit with their applications a stakeholder engagement report of no more than 20 pages for EAs and EISs. Second, it codifies existing practice by requiring a comment period of 45 to 60 days following the publication of a Notice of Intent for an EIS. I’m generally not concerned about these changes, though I would note that for certain processes that often receive timely EAs, such as applications for permits to drill (APDs) that don’t qualify for the categorical exclusions discussed below, the new stakeholder engagement report may slow the average permitting timeline. Nevertheless, this is a very minor nit compared to the enormous improvements reflected in this title.
The Forest Service is poised to hand off one of the West’s most visited landscapes
Critics say this is a test case for privatizing public lands.
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Since I live near Pike’s Peak which has been managed by a city since 1948, and no one seems to complain about it. With all due respect to Mr. Weiss, I think it’s a fear-mongering stretch and a half to say that this is a “test case for privatization”.
Here’s the history.
In response, Pitkin County will take over management in 2027. Critics see this as a harbinger of further privatization; the Forest Service did not respond to requests for comment.
“This is the camel’s nose under the tent. The Trump administration wants to sell off lands wherever it can and privatize lands wherever it can’t. So this is the test case for privatization,” said Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities.
Roaring Fork Valley residents and organizations appear to support the county even as they criticize the conditions that forced the transfer. “The county is responding to unfortunate circumstances on behalf of our community,” said Will Roush, executive director of Wilderness Workshop, an environmental watchdog group based in the Roaring Fork. “The real tragedy is this administration’s failure to adequately invest in and staff our federal land-management agencies and the places that are so fundamental to our state’s identity.”
And yet, the budget is not set by the Administration, and we all know that the White River (and pretty much all forests) are underfunded. When Scott Fitzwilliams came to the White River from Region 5 in 2009. he said he was shocked by how much lower the recreation budget was than in California.
And HCN does the usual stuff..
The agency lost almost 6,000 employees in 2025, and President Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 would slash its budget still further, cutting it by 75%. The White River National Forest has lost a third of its year-round staff since 2024, going from 169 to 111 employees, according to an analysis by Aspen Journalism.
Doesn’t mention the prior gain of 6K employees, the budget deficit (pre-Trump Admin), or the fact that we have no reason to believe that this Trump budget will go any farther with the Appropriators than the last one.
I have two hypotheses for why the sudden privatization flurry…1) after all the dire warnings, the fire season is over, so there’s a need for new fear fodder, or 2) it’s all about getting people riled up for the mid-terms. Other hypotheses?
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The last time we discussed this is here. in May (pre-fire season). In that one where I asked Grok for other examples besides Pike’s Peak…
City and County of Denver / Winter Park Recreational Association, Colorado — Holds a long-term ski area term special use permit for Winter Park Resort on Arapaho National Forest lands.
Various counties and municipalities partner for trail systems, shuttle operations (e.g., Hanging Lake in Colorado), or local recreation management through cooperative agreements that may include SUPs.
Other forests (e.g., Ozark-St. Francis in Arkansas) list “Access Special Use Permit Applications” and “State Parks Special Use Permit Applications,” indicating counties or local entities apply for road access or facility management.
In a sense, aren’t ski area permits a form of “privatization of public lands”? Just asking…because the SUP is not to a county but to a private corporation?
For those curious, here is the history on Pike’s Peak according to Google AI
The City of Colorado Springs has held the federal special use permit to operate and maintain the Pikes Peak Highway since June 7, 1948. [1] The agreement was struck with the U.S. Forest Service after a previous private 20-year license held by industrialist Spencer Penrose expired. When the road initially reverted back to the federal government, it fell into severe disrepair due to a lack of maintenance funds. To solve this, the Forest Service issued the special use permit to Colorado Springs, allowing the city to take over maintenance and implement a toll system to fund its upkeep. [1, 2]
And
The concessions on Pikes Peak are officially outsourced by the City of Colorado Springs to the hospitality corporation Aramark. While the city manages the physical road and infrastructure, the concessionaire is responsible for day-to-day guest hospitality services on the mountain.
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The concessionaire partners directly with the city to manage visitor impact on the alpine tundra. They lead training programs for staff and maintain waste management and sustainable day-to-day practices, helping the peak maintain its high-level “Gold Standard Hospitality” environmental designation from Leave No Trace.
Court decision in Klamath Forest Alliance v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (E.D. California)
On August 19, the district court invalidated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Opinion for the South Fork Sacramento Public Safety and Forest Restoration Project, on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, including two recovery units for northern spotted owls. The court found that the agency’s determination that certain affected territories do not represent the only source population to the recovery units is not supported by evidence in the record. The Forest’s reliance on the BiOp was therefore also illegal. The article includes a link to the court’s opinion.
On September 15, the district court vacated the BiOp because the lack of analysis is a substantive error that might affect reconsideration of the decision.
Court order in Monroe County Board of Commissioners v. U. S. Forest Service (S.D. Indiana)
On September 8, the district court vacated most of the Houston South Vegetation Management and Restoration Project on the Hoosier National Forest, discussed here. The court determined that, “The seriousness of the Forest Service’s error and its repeated failure to resolve that error favor the ordinary remedy of vacatur.” The court found that the Forest’s use of a supplemental information report instead of reinitiating NEPA was “perfunctory,” and that “despite having had two attempts to do so, has not offered any information that would bear on this Project’s impact on Lake Monroe (emphasis by the court). The article includes the court order.
TRO denied in Wild Horse Education v. U. S. Department of the Interior (D. Idaho)
On September 5, the district court refused to grant a temporary restraining order to stop a helicopter drive-trap operation to gather 281 wild horses from the Challis Herd Management Area, but it set a schedule for briefing a motion for a preliminary injunction that would occur after the gather is scheduled to occur. The court found no irreparable harm because other members of the herd would remain, and no horses would be adopted or sold for at least 45 days.
The district court has granted Oregon Wild Horse Organization, Central Oregon Wild Horse Coalition, and Western Watersheds Project a temporary restraining order against the BLM’s Riddle Herd Management Area “emergency gather.” Officials argued the emergency round-up was necessary to provide food, water, and veterinary care as the herd faced severe shortages and long distances between water following a fire that burned 70% of the area. Plaintiffs say the BLM lacks proper monitoring data showing horses are causing environmental harm and claim the agency is using wildfire as a pretext for aggressive reductions while ignoring commercial livestock impacts.
New lawsuit: Wilderness Workshop v. Burgum (D. Colorado)
On September 8, Wilderness Workshop and the Wilderness Society sued the BLM over oil and gas lease sales, which covered 430 square miles in Colorado and Wyoming. The complaint alleges, “BLM’s EA for the Colorado lease sale did not analyze the impacts of leasing on big game habitat or migration corridors.” According to plaintiffs, “The problem is that the plans were all created under the assumption that at the leasing stage or later, BLM could add new protective stipulations as needed.” And then BLM issued and an Instructional Memorandum interpreting the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s requirements to only allow lease stipulations to protect wildlife if they are included in the agency’s resource management plan. Plaintiffs argue that this interpretation conflicts with FLPMA regulations’ requirement for “preference criteria” that would protect sensitive areas. They also allege that lands with wilderness characteristics weren’t properly considered. They allege violations of FLPMA, NEPA, OBBBA and the APA. The article includes a link to the complaint.
Court decision in Oregon Natural Desert Association v. Groffy (D. Oregon)
On September 8, the district court followed up its preliminary injunction by holding that a 2025 land use plan amendment that reduced the area to be protected from livestock grazing by being managed as “key research natural areas” for sage-grouse violated FLPMA and NEPA. The judge found that BLM had failed to adequately address the impacts of grazing on the wilderness characteristics of the wilderness study areas within these RNAs, as required by FLPMA. The BLM also violated NEPA by failing to address changes in definitions of key terms used in the 2025 amendment and other “unexplained inconsistency.” The court did not vacate the plan, but ordered the BLM to maintain the status quo. It also upheld the redesignation of areas as open to grazing as being consistent with the purpose of the RNAs. The article includes a link to the opinion.
Court decision in Cascadia Wildlands v. Alcock (9th Cir.)
On September 18, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court decision that had favored plaintiffs. The BLM decision at issue was the adoption of a forest management plan for timber harvesting within a 13,225-acre area, and the EA’s compliance with NEPA. The court found the effects analysis to be adequate for soil disturbances, invasive weeds, sensitive species, and cumulative impacts. The court also found that the EA did not need to be as site-specific as plaintiffs sought because, “NEPA does not require agencies to do a “parcel by parcel examination of potential environmental effects” when “the parcels likely to be affected are not yet known.” The court made it clear how this decision differed from condition-based management (and there is an implication that the site-specific effects analysis sought by plaintiffs must be provided when the parcels are known):
“Finally, Plaintiffs suggest that the BLM’s adoption of the Siuslaw Plan does not comply with NEPA because the agency’s future selection of parcels for timber harvesting will not be subject to any NEPA review. That is incorrect. As the record makes clear, before approving any specific timber harvesting projects, “the BLM will complete a tiered environmental assessment, categorical exclusion review, or Determination of NEPA Adequacy (DNA), as appropriate.””
The article includes a link to the opinion (which is clearer than the article).
On July 14, the Trump Administration published a final rule limiting the definition of “take” of a listed species to an affirmative act that is intentionally and purposefully directed at a particular animal, and it no longer includes a definition of “harm” in this context, which formerly explicitly included effects on its habitat. The new rule became effective on September 14. There are now at least eight legal challenges to the regulation pending; seven are listed in this article. Below are links to complaints for some of them.
Preliminary injunction granted in Save the Bull Trout v. U. S. Dept. of the Interior (D. Montana)
On September 4, the district court enjoined Department of the Interior and West Side Ditch Company from diverting water from the Upper Clark Fork River when the streamflow falls below 90 cfs to ensure the functional integrity of bull trout critical habitat. The National Park Service operates the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site and diverts water from the West Side Ditch for its purposes. Plaintiffs allege that defendants unlawfully take threatened bull trout “via entrainment and inducement of suboptimal instream flow on the section of the UCF River downstream of the WSD,” and have not complied with an incidental take statement addressing these concerns. While the Park Service has taken some steps to address its direct effects, the court held, “NPS has failed, however, to meaningfully engage West Side on the installation of a fish screen beyond exercising its voting rights as a shareholder.”
(This case may illustrate how the changes to incidental take requirements discussed above could affect future actions. Here, there is both direct and indirect killing of a listed species, but it is arguably not intentional, and potentially not covered by ESA.)
New lawsuit: WildEarth Guardians v. Burgum (D. New Mexico)
On September 8, Plaintiffs challenged the failure of the Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize its proposed listing of the Pecos pupfish as a threatened species, and designation of its critical habitat. The fish is found only in the Pecos River Basin in Southeast New Mexico and West Texas. Four of the nine analysis units for the species include BLM lands. It is threatened by activities that affect surface and groundwater; plaintiffs specifically identify fracking. The one-year deadline passed in November, 2025. The press release includes a link to the complaint, and to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed listing rule.
New lawsuit: Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (D. Oregon)
On September 9, CBD, Friends of the Columbia Gorge and Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to complete the listing process for the northwestern and southwestern pond turtles, which had led to proposed listings in October of 2023. ESA requires a final decision within one year. The pond turtles are found on the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. They are threatened by predation from non-native species and habitat loss, allegedly including part of a lake that was drained on national forest land. The article includes a link to the complaint.
(In a rare instance of the government discussing pending litigation, the article quotes an “Interior Department spokesperson,” apparently in relation to the one-year listing deadline: “This lawsuit seeks to preserve a decades-old regulatory overreach that expanded the Endangered Species Act beyond the authority granted by Congress.”)
New lawsuit: WildEarth Guardians v. Burgum (D. D.C.)
On September 15, WildEarth Guardians sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to meet an August 2025 deadline for a final listing decision for this butterfly. It is endemic to tallgrass prairie habitat, including Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and Dakota Prairie National Grasslands (Forest Service), Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (Park Service) and some BLM lands. It was proposed for listing as a threatened species; the threats include habitat loss, herbicide use and poorly managed fire. The press release includes a link to the complaint.
Court decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (E.D. California)
Court decision in Defenders of Wildlife v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (E.D. California)
On September 16, the district court held that the Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act when it determined, in conjunction with its decision to list the Sierra Nevada red fox as endangered in 2021, that designation of a critical habitat for this population was “not prudent” (a term used in the statute). The FWS erred by “failing to weigh the benefits of designating critical habitat, failing to consider the potential effect on the recovery of the species, and in applying an incorrect ‘significant threat’ standard.” A small, isolated population of 18 to 39 foxes is found in high-elevation environments in California and southern Oregon. The article includes a link to both court orders to redo the process; the interim remedy has not yet been determined.
Court decision in Texas v. U. S. Department of the Interior (5th Cir.)
On September 11, in a case discussed in the last Smokey Wire, where the Fish and Wildlife Service abandoned its defense of listing the lesser prairie chicken as an endangered species in order to settle the case, the 5th Circuit (not the 10th Circuit, incorrectly identified there) reversed the district court’s decision to deny intervention to the Center for Biological Diversity and Texas Campaign for the Environment. However, the appellate court found that individual plaintiff members had not established standing to appeal the voluntary remand of the listing decision to the FWS.
(This clarifies the intervention question, but muddles the standing question, e.g.: “The members’ profession of an `intent’ to return to the places they had visited before—where they will presumably, this time, be deprived of the opportunity to observe animals of the endangered species—is simply not enough” for appellate standing.”)
Mifepristone (in case you think only the usual suspects do this)
Notice of Intent to Sue
On September 24, Students for Life of America formally warned the Food and Drug Administration on Sept. 24 that it will sue under the Endangered Species Act unless the agency acts on the abortion pill mifepristone within 60 days. The anti-abortion group argues that the FDA broke federal wildlife law when it approved the drug in 2000 without consulting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service, Fox News reported. The notice asks the FDA to take specific actions, including environmental testing and pulling the drug from the market… The group claims more than 50 tons of abortion-related medical waste reach water systems each year… The science offered so far is thin. (Taken verbatim from this article.)
New lawsuit: American Federation of Government Employees v. U. S. Department of Agriculture (N.D. California)
On September 8, four unions representing USDA employees, the County of Santa Clara, California; the City and County of San Francisco, California; Prince George’s County, Maryland; the Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies; the American Geophysical Union; the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks; Natural Resources Defense Council; and Western Watersheds Project sued to stop the Trump administration from implementing a reorganization of the Department. In their motion for a preliminary injunction (linked to this press release), they ask the court to halt “imminent forced relocations of employees that are part of a reorganization.” A statement from Western Watersheds Project:
“The Trump administration’s meddling in the structure and function of the U.S. Forest Service, and closure of Regional Offices and research facilities, will impair the management of our National Forests and National Grasslands, and undermine the legal safeguards that protect public lands and wildlife. This effort to eliminate land management professionals and reshuffle entire agencies without congressional authorization presents a clear violation of the separation of powers that is at the heart of American democracy.”
On September 16, the court granted the injunction, except for relocations of employees in the National Capital Region to another duty station within the commuting area.
Voluntary dismissal in Montana v. Haaland (D. Montana)
On September 14, the parties in this case filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against the National Park Service’s 2024 Bison Management Plan for Yellowstone National Park. In April 2026, the NPS had announced its intent to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement. A second lawsuit from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Council on Fish and Wildlife remains pending.
