NEPA reviews for forest management projects take 3-6 years while forests burn

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires environmental review before the US Forest Service can conduct timber sales, prescribed burns, or mechanical thinning on the 193 million acres it manages. The average Environmental Impact Statement takes nearly three years to complete, with the top quintile taking six years. Meanwhile, over 80 million acres of National Forest land urgently needs treatment to reduce wildfire risk. This creates a cruel paradox: the forests that need management most are the ones least likely to get it in time. A project that takes 4 years to approve may be designed for forest conditions that no longer exist by the time work begins — the target stand may have already burned, been killed by bark beetles, or changed structurally. The USFS now initiates less than half as many new projects per year as it did before 2010, not because there is less work to do, but because the agency's capacity to complete environmental analysis has been gutted by rising wildfire suppression costs cannibalizing its budget (wildfire now consumes over 50% of the Forest Service budget, up from 16% in 1995). The problem persists because NEPA litigation risk creates a culture of over-documentation — USFS staff produce 500-page environmental assessments for routine projects because they fear legal challenge, not because the analysis requires it.