This week ForestWatch and several other organizations submitted letters to the Biden administration requesting two approved and one proposed logging projects in the Los Padres National Forest be canceled or withdrawn.
Two commercial logging projects were approved in 2018 and 2019 under the Trump administration. ForestWatch is currently in court appealing both the Tecuya Ridge and Cuddy Valley projects. Both of these projects were approved by the Forest Service using loopholes to avoid preparing an environmental assessment or impact statement that would have required more analysis of the potential harms of the projects and whether they were warranted in the first place.
Each of these projects was added to a long list of projects approved during the previous administration that were flagged for review in a letter to the new administration signed by ForestWatch and 25 other organizations. The letter cited President Biden’s Executive Order 13990 that specifically called for an “immediate review of agency actions taken between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021.”
We also authored a letter requesting that the new administration withdraw the Pine Mountain logging project proposed last year. The project has been met with overwhelming criticism and opposition. Our partners at the California Chaparral Institute, Center for Biological Diversity, John Muir Project, and Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation co-signed the letter, which pointed to the president’s Executive Orders 13990 and 14008 as reason for the administration to re-evaluate whether the project should be withdrawn.
We will continue to push the new administration to alter course on these damaging projects while also advocating for limited Forest Service resources to be directed into smarter, beneficial activities.
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