Friends of the Clearwater's Policy Director, Jeff Juel, and board member, Dr. Harry Jageman recently submitted comments regarding the proposed change to limit public input from the U.S. Forest Service.

Friends of the Clearwater advocates for democratic management of the public's land. For nearly 40 years we have advocated for greater transparency and openness from government agencies.

Read more below to see both comments that were submitted in opposition to this change.

Jeff Juel's Comment:

March 6, 2025

Re: Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process (Federal Register Vol. 91, No. 25 / February 6, 2026; 5387-5398)

Submitted to comment portal at:
https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FS-2026-0001-0001

On behalf of Friends of the Clearwater (FOC), these are comments on the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service proposal to amend its Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process regulations (proposed rule). FOC is an organization whose purpose is to protect, conserve, restore and advocate on behalf of the wild nature of the Clearwater River Basin and adjacent watersheds of north-central Idaho which feature Wilderness, roadless areas, and habitat integrity and connectivity for large predators and other at-risk species on public lands and surrounding areas.

With this proposed rule the Forest Service attempts to make public influence on national forest land management extremely difficult. We see nothing about serving the public interest in “amending these regulations to consolidate and streamline processes, increase efficiency, and better align with the Agency’s statutory obligations and recent rescissions and revisions to National Environmental Policy Act regulations.”¹ It is said to be about agency “efficiency” which is code for making it much more difficult for citizens to participate in a meaningful dialogue with the agency. Arbitrary decisions made in the dark do not serve the public interest, rather they are made to serve those with political connections who plunder the public commons to make huge profits. Surely it matters that public lands not be sold off. But taking measures to obstruct the public from influencing management, as does this set of proposals, is essentially the same thing.

¹ Quotes, quoted sections and citations in these comments are from the proposed rule unless otherwise specified.

Taken individually and in combination, the various changes outlined in the proposed rule are an attack on public lands, wildlife, a clean and healthy environment and therefore on the values of the American people—as well as an attack on democracy itself.

Shortening public comment periods

In the proposed rule Summary the Forest Service deceptively states, “These regulations establish the process by which the public may file objections seeking administrative review for projects and activities implementing land management plans on national forests.” However a major aspect of the proposed rule would affect the public process governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) well before the administrative review process: “The time to file comments for a proposed action to be documented in an EA has been reduced from 30 days to 10 days, and from 45 days to 20 days for a proposed action to be documented in an EIS.”

The Forest Service can cite no example of how allowing more traditional 30-day, 45-day, or even 60-day comment periods on NEPA documents has resulted in harm to forests or any public value. On the other hand, robust comment period opportunities better inform citizens who care about the natural world and the ecological condition of our national forests. This naturally leads to better decisions and management.

And whereas for filing objections, “when the time period begins or expires on a Saturday, Sunday, or Federal holiday, the start or end date is extended to the next Federal working day” the comment period for filing comments on an EA or EIS is allowed to start any day—even on the Saturday before a Monday holiday—effectively reducing comment periods even further. The Forest Service is already notorious for having timed important comment periods to overlap with the Christmas/New Years holiday season.

Refusal to notify interested parties

When developing projects and for updates on projects, the Forest Service proposes to speak only to its own websites—not to the interested public: “The Forest Service would no longer publish comment and objection notices in a newspaper of record, but would publish notices on the USDA website where other project documents are also published. … The requirement to post notice on a USDA website is a more modern, cost-effective, efficient, and consistent way to inform individuals and entities about the opportunity to comment.” The Forest Service isn’t saying how much it would cost to actively notify the public as it has in the past, so this “cost-effective” claim is specious.

We are aware of no regulation explaining the meaning of “a USDA website.” Even specifying “the USDA website where other project documents are also published” is insufficient. The Forest Service could conform to the proposed requirement even if it posted a notice to an illogical, flat-out wrong, or previously unknown website/link. We are aware of no accountability mechanism if a responsible official chooses to obstruct or hide notifications in such a manner.

Similarly, “Objection responses would no longer be mailed to objectors, as is the current process.... Instead, responses would be published on the USDA website where other associated project documents are also published.” That is absurd. The proposal would require that Lead Objectors be identified in objections—for what purpose? Why would it be so hard for the Responsible Official to timely send via email or U.S. mail the objection response to the Lead Objector, and to even all the objecting parties?

No comment period on NEPA documents

“The designated opportunity for public comment for an EIS may be combined with the request for comment included in the notice of intent to prepare an EIS, as required by NEPA.” This is similar to what’s being proposed for Environmental Assessments (EAs). Section § 218.3(d) only vaguely describes requirements for what may likely be the only document subject to comment prior to the objection process. However, it does not specify that detailed analyses of impacts and environmental consequences is required. Furthermore, this is at a time when other Forest Service documents potentially posted on the project website—such as specialists’ reports, those documenting consultation with other agencies, required mitigations, project design specifications, and monitoring—may not be finalized or made publicly available. In other words, there is no requirement for allowing public comments on full NEPA analyses including detailed descriptions of alternatives, summaries of environmental consequences as written up by Forest Service specialists, and mitigation measures and project specifications so the public may provide feedback to prevent the agency from wasting public resources going far down a path towards creating a potentially illegal or destructive project. So much for “efficiency.” This also obliterates the public’s potential role in proposing better, more cost effective and truly efficient ways—alternatives—for full analysis and consideration. The proposed rule’s failure to genuinely involve the public is inconsistent with provisions of NEPA including:

And when a project proposed under this new rule is litigated and a court declares the rule in violation of NEPA, potentially dozens of other Forest Service decisions could soon be enjoined based on the new precedent. So much for “timely and efficient!”

Proposed rule would illegally censor the public by imposing unreasonable limitations on public expression.

A very clear message embedded throughout the proposed rule is that the Forest Service really does not want to read, consider, or respond to detailed, thoughtful, science-based and thorough input from the public at any stage of the project development or review.

This is evident from the proposed limit on the number of pages in objections. Under the proposed rule, we foresee a preponderance of instances where an EIS is only finally published when accompanied by a draft Record of Decision (ROD), or correspondingly when an EA is only made public when accompanied by a draft Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI). So for example the public would have a 150 to 300 page EIS to review but is only allowed to submit 30 pages in response, no matter how badly the EIS might analyze and disclose project impacts to, e.g., water quality and quantity, soil productivity, fish and wildlife habitat, endangered plants, fish and animals, roads, greenhouse gas emissions and climate, fire regimes, recreation opportunities, economic costs and benefits; plus cumulative effects, monitoring, and consistency with laws and land management plans. And although a picture is worth a thousand words as the saying goes, photographs of conditions in a project area to which the Forest Service might otherwise be oblivious are discouraged because they would count towards the page limitations so further limit objection text. The Forest Service would only finally disclose the wide array of project details and analyses of potential environmental harms at the initiation of the objection period, during which the new rule will gag the public using unreasonable page limits for criticisms, suggestions, alternatives, questions, and notifications of potential illegalities.

It’s of little help that, “Science or literature may be considered if the commenter clearly identifies the cause-and-effect issues relating literature to the environmental analysis.” At the comment stage, as we indicate above, the Forest Service may have provided little information to the public because Section §218.3(d) requirements are so vague. So how can anyone “relat(e) literature to the environmental analysis” if the latter is hardly articulated at that stage? Granting the Forest Service authority to reject submitted science and literature for its consideration would only approach acceptability if, it turn, the agency grants that these public submissions be officially recognized as part of the Project Record for judicial determination of its relevance. Courts should be allowed to judge whether the Forest Service is arbitrary and capricious in what it chooses to consider as best available science or otherwise relevant to its project analysis. The Forest Service might not like the judiciary reviewing its actions, but a) the frequency of Forest Service decisions being enjoined clearly demonstrates a need for such oversight, and b) that’s how a democracy

works.

“Objections submitted on or via electronic external media (such as CD-ROMs or external hard drives) shall not be accepted due to computer security policies.” This creates a problem for cases where much new scientific information or other documents supporting objections might arise after the close of the comment period. And even if the proposed rule did not expressly limit the amount of new literature submitted as attachments to an objection as long as it is supported by the required cause-and-effect explanation, the question remains as to how it can be feasibly provided. For example, the Forest Service website to which these comments are submitted states, “You can attach up to 20 files, but each file cannot exceed 10MB.” Both the limitation on number of files and the size of individual files (megabytes) is arbitrary and unreasonable. Such limitations have, without proper authorization, plagued public comment and objection submissions for quite some time already. And the clause, “Comments submitted on or via electronic external media (such as CD-ROMs or external hard drives) shall not be accepted due to computer security policies” presents similar barriers for submissions of comments on Forest Service proposals. The Forest Service cannot point to any instances where submissions on external media/hard drives have breached security. It is inconceivable that the Forest Service is unable to analyze external media for security threats as other government agencies undoubtedly do. Clearly the Forest Service is only interested in arbitrarily limiting the number of attachments supporting opposing views, including independent science—not keeping its internet portals or computers secure.

“For objections …Electronic documents must be in .doc, .docx, .pdf, or .txt document formats. …Objections (sic) submitted electronically must be in .doc, .docx, .pdf, or .txt document formats...” These limitations are also arbitrary, unreasonable and unwarranted. The Forest Service website to which these comments are submitted says, “Valid file types include: bmp, docx, gif, jpg, jpeg, pdf, png, pptx, rtf, sgml, tif, tiff, txt, wpd, xlsx, xml” so why not with comments and objections?

“References and attachments. The following documents may be incorporated by reference in the comments submitted. Other documents, attachments, or website links are not allowed except as specified. …(2) Forest Service directives and land management plans.” We fail to see why the agency’s own regulatory documents must be expressly incorporated. The NEPA documents being commented on already incorporate them. This signals that the agency is attempting to distance itself from the planning record upon which the validation of the land management plan—in its position of being tiered to—is based. That record, including the full documentation of public participation during the entire planning process, must also be available for incorporation. It is disturbing that the agency wants to avoid accountability to those members of the public who went to great pains in participating in the planning process. So for example, where FOC disagrees with the lack of protections for wildlife in the applicable land management plan, and expressed this throughout the planning NEPA and objection phases, then where projects are being proposed to implement actions that exemplify those very threats to wildlife, this proposed rule would force us reiterate our entire planning participation in regards to wildlife—even though the agency already has our concerns on record. This is beyond absurd.

Elimination of higher agency review

“As the Agency continues to navigate organizational change and streamline processes, it is more efficient and effective to allow the objection process to remain with the responsible official and interdisciplinary team most familiar with the project or activities that are subject to the objection process.” Since the responsible official will have shown they were incapable of designing a project in alignment with laws and public values over the months-long duration of development and analysis, etc. there should be no expectation that they would we willing and capable of making corrections and improvements over the course of 10 or 15 days, and adequately explaining it in five pages or less.

Declaring “emergency” outside of statutory authority

Section § 218.14: “Circumstances requiring immediate implementation. A situation may arise where immediate implementation of a proposed project or activity is needed, such as to provide relief from hazards threatening human health and safety, mitigate threats to natural resources on National Forest System or adjacent lands, or avoid a loss of commodity value sufficient to jeopardize the Agency’s ability to accomplish project objectives directly related to resource protection or restoration.” In its context, it is not clear if this is referring to projects “developed under statutory emergency authorities not subject to objections” as stated earlier in the proposed rule (emphasis added). Therefore, Section § 218.14 appears to authorize bypassing the objection process in instances where procedures and public participation steps were initiated under the assumption that there is no “emergency.” If this latter scenario is what is being contemplated, the Forest Service should explain the basis of such authority plus the limitations on authority to avoid arbitrary invocation of this section.

“This section is amended to specify how the procedures set forth in these regulations would apply to emergency situations requiring immediate actions, as determined by the Chief or Associate Chief.” The Forest Service must explain why the Forest Service Chief or Associate Chief would not be the Responsible Official in that instance. We would assume they would know the consequences (via reviewing project analysis) of such a determination. If not, the Chief or Associate Chief would have no business exercising such authority in what would then be essentially a rubber stamp exercise.

Switching processes midstream

“Projects subject to 36 CFR 218 that initiate the designated opportunity for public comment after the publication of this proposed rule may include a statement in the notice for opportunity to comment that the FONSI or ROD may be subject to the revised objection process if the final 36 CFR 218 rule is published before the project’s objection period.” Clearly the Forest Service is so chomping at the bit to exist within its proposed new regulatory framework that it expects citizens to act as if they are there also. It is quite perverse to burden the public with two different sets of rules and procedures at the same time they are already navigating an unpalatable Forest Service project proposal.

Other displays of contempt for public participation

We note:

“…an objection must include …a statement that demonstrates the connection between the issue included in the objection and the issue as it was included in prior specific written comments…”

“…an objection must include …Clearly articulated recommendations for the responsible official to consider taking and/or clearly stated specific mitigations for the responsible official to consider …when finalizing the FONSI or ROD.”

By including the above bold emphasized (ours) vague and subjective conditions, the Forest Service is signaling it will exercise more arbitrary justifications for ignoring and dismissing public concerns.

We also note:

“…an objection must include … clearly stated specific mitigations for the responsible official to consider (with statutory or regulatory authority for the mitigation specified) when finalizing the FONSI or ROD.”

By including the above bold emphasized (ours) clause, the agency unreasonably demands the public hold the Forest Service’s hand to remind them of the authorities they pretend to be unaware of. Well done!

In closing, the proposed rule is a thinly disguised ploy to prevent the public from exerting influence on national forest management. We strongly urge the USDA to withdraw it for the reasons we’ve expressed in this letter.

Sincerely,

Jeff Juel, Forest Policy Director
Friends of the Clearwater, P.O. Box 9241, Moscow, ID 83843

(208) 882-9755

Dr. Harry Jageman's comment:

February 26, 2026

To: Director Ecosystem Management Coordination
201 14^th Street SW, Mailstop 1108, Washington, DC 20250-1124

Dear Sir:

I am appalled at the Forest Service’s veiled attempt to limit public input on proposed projects as outlined in the agency’s Proposed Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process. Allowing only ten days to respond to an Environmental Assessment or twenty days to respond to a complex Environmental Impact Statement is totally insufficient. For the average person working a full-time job, that only gives one weekend and a few evenings to read, understand and formulate a response to a 75-page Environmental Assessment.   A little more time is given for a 150-page Environmental Impact Statement, but those documents are likely to be more complex and formulating a response is likely to be more time consuming.

You have said nothing about the fact that multiple projects could be released during the same timeframe, making it even harder for the public to respond appropriately.  You have not considered that members of the public are often traveling or are on work assignments that do not allow immediate review of your proposals.  Even with the existing 30 and 45-day comment periods, I have personally had instances where my schedule did not allow me to respond appropriately.  I can remember one instance when my local Forest released at least five projects during the Christmas holidays. Your proposal thus limits the ability of the general public to respond to your proposals and favors paid fulltime professionals in environmental groups, industry organizations or advocacy groups to respond to your proposals. That being said, ten days for and EA and twenty days for an EIS is not an adequate timeframe for anybody, professionals included.

Your idea of letting the responsible official become the reviewing officer for the project objection is also suspect.  It is highly unlikely that the people who designed the project are going to respond objectively to criticism of their proposal.  The idea of the old appeal and existing objection system was to put a fresh set of objective eyes on the proposal. Lack of oversight is likely to lead to more egregious proposals and losses in the court system.

I don’t see how putting page limits on comments, objections or even the environmental documents themselves are appropriate.  Some concerns may require longer explanations, especially when the Forest Service is limiting the size of the environmental documents to 90-pages for an EA and 150-pages for an EIS.  With shorter project descriptions and limited discussion of environmental impacts by the Forest Service, it is likely that even more detail may be needed to respond to complex issues like impacts to water quality, wildlife, and vegetative condition.  Please drop these arbitrary page requirements.

You have also proposed limiting attachments and alternative scientific publications to comments and objectives.   This provision will allow Forest Service officials to “cherry pick” scientific publications favorable to their position and exclude potentially important and credible information into the project record.  For controversial issues like fuels management and the impact of logging on wildfire ignition and behavior, the other side of the issue is unlikely to be brought forward without public oversight.  Please drop provisions that exclude what the public can attach to their comments and/or objections.

You have said you are going to eliminate project notifications in newspapers and the Federal Register.  If this is done you must maintain opportunities for individuals and organizations to be notified regarding all potential projects either by text or email.  Notifications should include all potential projects including categorical exclusions and emergency proposals that are not part of the objection process.  The public must be given the opportunity to fully understand what is going on their public lands without having to search multiple websites on a recurring basis.  Individuals and organizations must be able to sign up for appropriate automatic notification of all projects on a particular Forest prior to the final decision being made (no exceptions).

In summary, you have not made a sufficient case for significantly reducing public input on proposed projects.  You estimate that the current system adds 120-165 days to a proposed project that is dealing with forest conditions that will have consequences for decades.  In comparison to the impacts you are creating, this is a relatively short timeframe! If done correctly, project staff work can often take several months or even years and there is no reason why staff work can not be done concurrently with collecting and responding to public comment.  Please work to include public input into your decisions and not exclude it.  This has always been the goal of NEPA.

/s/ Harry R. Jageman
Dr. Harry R. Jageman
U.S. Forest Service Retired