Applet, along with The Wilderness Society, characterize the effort to repeal the rule not as a genuine effort to reduce fire risk, but as part of a larger administration crusade to roll back environmental regulations.
legal trial
The Administrative Procedure Act requires that when an agency rescinds a rule, it must be able to demonstrate a rational connection between the evidence and the final decision, and not be “arbitrary and capricious.” Essentially, the administration must be able to logically and scientifically defend its argument in an environmental impact statement due this month, and the court will rule on whether it meets that standard.
“They can’t offer as an explanation a decision that contradicts the evidence that preceded it,” says Gendzior.
Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the agency must thoroughly analyze the environmental consequences of rescinding the rule, consider a full range of alternatives to revocation, and meaningfully grapple with the science, including the Applet study.
“They have been pretty careless in their public statements so far about fire-based causes,” Caputo said. “Everything they’re saying seems to be contrary to the science, and these are all things they have to deal with.”
Although the administration’s motive in lifting the rule will not determine the legal outcome, and it would be difficult to prove that it was using the nation’s wildfire crisis as an excuse to increase logging, Caputo said that a failure to connect with evidence showing that roads increase the risk of fires would qualify the action and result in legal challenges.
The Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, a congressionally chartered, bipartisan body comprised of 50 members from industry, science, and fire management, spent years taking a comprehensive look at wildfire policy. This resulted in 167 official recommendations for 2023 on every dimension of the problem, including risk reduction, fire suppression, post-fire recovery, workforce and technology.
According to Tyson Burton-Riggs, co-founder of the Alliance for Wildfire Resilience and co-chief of staff for the commission, the Roadless Rule was not included in any recommendations or significant discussions.
“I think there’s a risk in using the fire as an argument,” he said. “Rodless certainly deserves the conversation, but that’s probably a different conversation.”
This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.
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