U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station (2024); USGS from WaPo article on Hurricane Helen damage to forests. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2024/hurricane-helene-forest-damage-north-carolina/ Can forest plans keep up with Nature?
by Sam Evans
Late last week the Southern Environmental Law Center filed suit challenging the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan on behalf of MountainTrue, Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Sierra Club. These groups have spent years and thousands of hours of staff and volunteer time to help the Forest Service get it right, only to see their interest in ecological restoration left out of the final product. Here’s why we feel we have no choice but to sue:
The 2012 planning rule promised to be a watershed moment. Unlike older plans, 2012-rule plans are supposed to restore ecological integrity and biological diversity first and foremost, with multiple-use and timber management to the extent compatible with that restoration emphasis. This narrower, more science-based approach was also supposed to take some of the conflict out of the process and make planning easier and faster.
It’s not working, and the reason is simple: Local decisionmakers want to hold onto the discretion that the planning rule tried to remove. The rule instructed planners to adopt plan components—specifically including standards or guidelines, which operate as constraints on future projects—to maintain and restore ecological integrity. In other words, the rule told planners to give up the flexibility to conduct projects that don’t contribute to ecological integrity.
To that, the Nantahala-Pisgah team simply said “no thanks.” Under our new plan, all logging is good logging, no matter where it occurs. I don’t mean this as hyperbole: The plan’s actionable goals for ecological integrity—lots more early successional habitat and open canopy conditions—apply only at the landscape scale. No matter where and how logging occurs, it counts toward these targets.
This should go without saying, but “more logging” will not necessarily restore ecological integrity. According to the agency’s best available science, ecological integrity is different for each forest community type, or “ecozone.” Each ecozone has its own disturbance regime, which creates canopy openings of a characteristic scale and frequency. On the Nantahala-Pisgah, for example, sheltered, moist cove hardwood forests should be dominated by very small gaps, with rare larger openings. Dry ecozones with higher fire exposure experience stand-replacing disturbances more often. These large and small openings create the conditions for different species to regenerate, maintaining canopy diversity.
Rather than setting objectives to restore or mimic natural disturbance regimes, however, the Nantahala-Pisgah simply added up the total acreage of all those small and large gaps, across all ecozones, and set an aggregate, landscape-scale target for early successional habitat creation. Conveniently enough, early successional habitat will be created through scheduled timber production. None of the plan’s objectives connect the dots between the overall logging target and ecozone-scale needs for ecological integrity.
That’s where standards or guidelines should come in. But the Nantahala-Pisgah plan contains zero standards or guidelines to ensure that logging contributes to ecological integrity as the agency defined it. The plan explains that this omission was intentional. According to the plan, logging isn’t required to contribute to ecozone-scale integrity because of (1) wildlife habitat needs and (2) operational and financial considerations.
To be clear, the 2012 planning rule does not allow units to ignore ecological integrity requirements to provide wildlife habitat. Quite the contrary: Restoring ecological integrity is precisely how the planning rule anticipates we will provide wildlife habitat. That leaves operational and financial considerations. In other words, the Nantahala-Pisgah says it’s more economically efficient to conduct scheduled regeneration harvest in large patch cuts than it is to restore ecozones. Does anyone else hear echoes from the 1982 rule?
Leadership for the Nantahala-Pisgah have assured us that they want to do good work, and that this plan will give them the flexibility to do so. In other words, they tell us, plans don’t matter. But planning is the only opportunity to influence landscape-scale outcomes. Without consistent direction to serve as a rudder, the Forest Service will almost always go with the flow. We all know that the easiest work, not necessarily the most important, is what gets done. And the Nantahala-Pisgah’s internal analysis (not disclosed in the EIS, mind you) bears out this concern. It shows that the heaviest logging will continue to occur in the wrong ecosystems, degrading both structure and composition over time.
This isn’t the only problem with the Nantahala-Pisgah plan, but it’s a big one. A plan like this one is an existential threat to the planning rule itself. No one expected the transition to ecological restoration to be easy in the East, where timber production has been the mode of operation for decades. But we can’t sit back and let the Forest Service set the precedent that it doesn’t even need to try.
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Attached is a copy of the complaint.(1) 2025-03-27 Complaint
“But planning is the only opportunity to influence landscape-scale outcomes. ” I would say planning yes, NFMA plan revisions.. not so much. Because planning needs to be more flexible, for new species, for hurricanes and wildfires that impact at the landscape scale.
It goes back to the concept of “plans as loose-leaf notebooks” as the Committee of Scientists wrote.
As to “ecological integrity” I think (and thought in 2012) that a better goal would be climate resilience or resilience in general.
And the SERAL projects seem very landscape-scale-y to me and don’t involve the dreaded CEs. What’s not to like?.
Plans are flexible. They can be amended “in any manner whatsoever,” so long as the Forest Service is using best available science. When you say that plans should be more flexible, I wonder if what you really mean is that they should allow project-level flexibility? If so, then your thesis runs headlong into the same problem, which is that plans have to constrain projects in order to influence landscape-scale outcomes. This will be true as long as individual decisionmakers have an incentive to take actions that don’t contribute to landscape-scale desired conditions.
We all like resilience, which is why resilience is half the definition of ecological integrity. It’s necessary but not sufficient. Yes, we need resilience, but you can have a resilient landscape that doesn’t provide for native species’ habitats. A parking lot is resilient to fire, after all. That’s why the other half of the definition is to restore conditions that are enough like the reference landscape that we can be confident most native species will persist. This is just “intelligent tinkering.”
I think we may be talking past each other 1). This is a Jon question, but I thought the 2012 Rule made it more difficult to amend plans.
2) I don’t think Forest Plans have to “constrain projects in order to influence landscape scale outcomes.” Take the case of this North Yuba Landscape Resilience Project https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=59693
These are very specific restrictions. So perhaps the answer is not putting all that in the Plan Revision, but in the specifics of larger- scale EISs. It seems like potentially unnecessary work to do both.
3) What specific outcomes need to be addressed at the “landscape scale”, and does that need to be larger than 250 K acres? I can think of species recovery efforts (already covered).
4) I’m not sure that given the history of the Appalachians, there are “reference conditions” that can be meaningfully defined and achieved today. For example, having been involved in Chestnut restoration efforts, it’s not happening soon biologically. Indigenous folks’ use of fire might not fit in with current housing patterns. Acreages of blowdowns might not meet reference conditions either depending on when the reference conditions were determined to exist .
Perhaps we overthought this all along.. to protect native species, perhaps we should simply figure out each of their habitats and tolerances, and build prescriptions and guidelines up with the other constraints of today, and adjust as Nature and people change. Perhaps the coarse- filter/ fine- filter approach was a disciplinary full employment program for historic veg ecologists to wrestle importance back from species biologists.
1) The 2012 Rule was intended to make it easier to keep plans current. The main thing it ended up changing was the addition of the “administrative correction” without NEPA, but that doesn’t have much effect. The think that can’t be made simpler is NEPA. There was discussion of a CE for amendments, and there actually is one for any forest plan decision ((e)(16), but there is language in it that makes it unusable. (My suggestion of a CE for amendments that reduce environmental effects by restricting future actions wasn’t well-received.)
2, 3, 4) The forest-wide diversity language in NFMA requires that commitments to that outcome be made in a forest plan. Since it involves vegetation, it’s a big part of the plan. The ecological approach taken in 2012 was the best available science at the time. This approach allows flexibility to deal with circumstances where historic conditions are not appropriate or achievable.
Sure, decisions that implement the plan can “influence landscape outcomes” in ways that are restrictive than the plan standards for specific locations and actions, but I don’t see how that is relevant to what is required for forest plans.
However, I think Sam’s point wasn’t the legal one – more that there tend to be short-term incentives (i.e. targets) that would bias management if a forest plan didn’t establish incentives for the long term (especially mandatory standards) that limit flexibility.
If ever there was a time that “conditions in a unit have significantly changed” (triggering the NFMA requirement to revise a forest plan), this is it. Especially where the decisions made in the forest plan explicitly assume that these kinds of changes would NOT occur. From a practical standpoint, it may not make sense to revise the plan right now, which would be fine if the Forest Service also recognizes that it has achieved its desired conditions for early seral forest habitat and won’t propose to create any more until at least after the do revise the forest plan.
Maybe they agree, since the Forest Service is saying this: “Right now, the USDA Forest Service continues to focus on the issues that matter to Western North Carolinians following Hurricane Helene — reducing the unprecedented amount of downed trees and woody debris fueling wildfires …”
https://www.bpr.org/bpr-news/2025-04-02/environmental-groups-launch-lawsuit-over-the-nantahala-pisgah-forest-plan
But plaintiffs also say this: “The Pisgah National Forest has already prepared at least 15 timber sales spanning 2,153 acres including several sensitive and unique areas that do not involve public comment periods or predecisional environmental review.” Obviously, none of these should be going forward now. But how do they avoid these requirements of NEPA?
I would guess it’s some kind of ESD.
Jon, you’re right on the money with this:
> Especially where the decisions made in the forest plan explicitly assume that these kinds of changes would NOT occur.
Here, in fact, the NPNF did assume that there would be no meaningful level of future natural disturbance. In making that assumption, it ignored the significant disturbance events of the past couple of decades (calling those events “outliers” and arguing they had no bearing on future disturbance). Even after tossing out the outliers, the NPNF made a further assumption that natural disturbance levels would dramatically decrease even further in the future.
To your other question about whether the Forest Service will recognize that the plan’s needs have already been met, I think the answer is plainly no. ESH-creation projects continue to move forward. The plan is very clear that the objective to create early successional habitat through logging is independent of whether that type of habitat is created by other sources, and that the only path to changing the objectives is to amend or revise the plan in the future. (And the plan also explains clearly that they won’t even begin monitoring to determine if this is a need for amendment or revision until 2027). So, we sent a letter to the Forest Service pointing out the obligation to revise and reminding them that revisions have been done under similar circumstances in the past. (We also suggested that an amendment could keep the plan current enough to avoid the need for revision.) An amendment process could also have avoided the need for this litigation. We did not receive a response to the letter.
Finally, those 2,153 acres are for salvage sales. I’m not aware of any authority allowing them to skip NEPA for those. However, they do appear to believe that they are implementing the Forest Plan, which provides broadly for salvage. Although salvage is mentioned in the plan, however, it was not part of the plan analysis or consultation. And why would it have been? Why would you spend time analyzing the effects of salvage if you’re anticipating no natural disturbance?
Nitpick contradictions as you want but they should get whatever downed trees out that they can. That unprecedented disturbance is not historically natural. Isnt it being myopic to not support removing that heavy fuel where they can reach it in those rugged mtns? Its going to burn hotter than natural when it does burn….SE and eastern slopes will burn.
Machiavellian of me to type this, but in my not so humble opinion the lawsuit is less about consistency with the 2012 rule and MUCH more about control. Under the current plan for the N&P, the Forest Service is the lead entity and has the bulk of the control – – as Congress intended – – not the various NGOs, be they hook and bullet, OHV, mountain bike, or preservationist oriented. Also, not many loggers in the Southern Appalachians are under the age of 50, and mills are closing, markets are shrinking, so delaying plan implementation by a few more years via litigation will produce SELC and company’s desired outcome – no more management through commercial timber sale. Will prescribed fire be next on the agenda?
AA I think it’s a legitimate framing to ask whether much of this is really about control. If you believed you were righteous, and had the ultimate “no” lever, would you resist any efforts to give up your power? See the broader permitting reform discussion. So it doesn’t seem Machiavellian to me, it’s just another tool to influence public policy.
AA – Preach!. SELC and Mtn True are philosophically against the NF logging. They dont consider the actual small scales that are even feasible today (including the industry/demographic reason like you said). The new NanPisgah LMP takes an ecosystem approach at the stand level and preserves/excludes timber mgmt in vast areas….designated old growth, Special Interest Areas, Eco Interest Areas. Most of the logging is in the Matrix, the areas best suited for active mgmt. These forests will never burn like they used to due to WUI. Logging needs to be supported for how the new LMP allows it.
> SELC and Mtn True are philosophically against the NF logging
If you’re local, you should know this isn’t true. SELC is spending its own funds to support commercial restoration on the Cherokee NF and MountainTrue has spent lots of time and resources helping the Forests in both NC and TN find opportunities for commercial harvest.
> The new NanPisgah LMP takes an ecosystem approach at the stand level
This is simply not true. Stand-level need is not the driver for management action under the new plan. The landscape-level desire for more ESH is the driver for local action.