On September 25, Wilderness Watch, Sequoia ForestKeeper, and Tule River Conservancy filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS), challenging the agency’s unlawful decision to implement extensive and motorized tree cutting and burning across thousands of acres of designated Wilderness within Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California. The Wilderness Act prohibits NPS from intentionally altering natural processes in designated Wilderness areas and specifically prohibits the use of motor vehicles and motorized equipment, such as helicopters and chainsaws, which the agency plans to use to implement its tree cutting and burning project. Nonetheless, NPS made the now-challenged decision to intensively reconfigure the forest in and around sequoia groves deep within the Wilderness areas. NPS decided to forego the environmental analysis and public engagement process typically required by NEPA. Instead, the agency fashioned its project authorization as "emergency" activities, citing certain provisions applicable to NEPA that allow agencies to act quickly in the immediacy of discrete emergencies and to thus adjust the mode with which they then satisfy their NEPA obligations. The Park Service's approach to "fuels reduction" in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks does not fit the mold of a qualified emergency. Instead, the agency’s project spans tens of thousands of acres of landscape-scale modifications that could be implemented over an indefinite number of years. Our legal challenge focuses on the detriment to the public in allowing federal agencies to shield large-scale and controversial projects like this from public involvement under the guise of "emergency."
Click here to read our press release, a copy of the complaint, and a detailed FAQ with more information about this lawsuit and why it matters for Wilderness in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, and Wilderness around the country. |
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