Timber Monitoring
Timber Monitoring has been and continues to be integral to the WSG mission. Projects done on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land are subject to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA). In concurrence with NEPA, the managing agency is required to write an Environmental Impact Statement for any project on the land that will have human and environmental effects. The Statements are written as a result of the agencies’ research into the area, and should be based on hard, scientific and ecological evidence. However, sometimes the research is incomplete, or even influenced by interest groups who have a stake in the outcome of the project. Fortunately, NEPA, one of the most effective environmental legislation in our country, allows for public comments as an integral aspect of the decision-making process.
The purpose of Timber Monitoring is to challenge the decisions made on the basis of flawed research. We at WSG do this by visiting the public land in question and surveying it, speaking with the Forest Service or BLM official making the decision, and conducting our own academic research. This allows us to make better judgments as to whether the agency has correctly identified the environmental impacts and if they have sufficiently measured the extent of the damages of a particular plan/policy. Our response can then take a few different forms. First, the work done in the field allows for a very informed comment at any stage in the EIS process. Second, if the decision has been made, we can work to make a legal challenge in the form of an appeal to the decision in question.