The Forest Service is responsible for managing over 192 million acres of public lands—about 30 percent of all federal lands in the United States. In carrying out its responsibilities, the Forest Service traditionally has administered its programs through 9 regional offices, 155 national forests, 20 national grasslands, and several hundred ranger districts. Figure 1 shows a map of the Forest Service regions and national forests. To sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests, the Forest Service can propose land management projects that may change the existing condition of vegetation—projects referred to as vegetation management. Vegetation management projects may include, but are not limited to, activities such as using prescribed burning, timber harvests, or herbicides; or thinning trees, grass, weeds, or brush. Projects that include these types of activities are intended to, among other things, maintain healthy ecosystems, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildland fire, and manage the nation’s forests for multiple uses, such as timber, recreation, and watershed management. Under NEPA, agencies such as the Forest Service generally evaluate the likely environmental effects of projects they propose using an EA or, if the projects likely would significantly affect the environment, a more detailed EIS. However, an agency generally need not prepare an EA or EIS if it determines that activities of a proposed project fall within a category of activities the agency has already determined have no significant environmental impact—called categorical exclusions. The agency may then approve projects fitting within the relevant categories using these predetermined categorical exclusions rather than carrying out a project- specific EA or EIS. For a project to be approved using a categorical exclusion, the Forest Service must determine whether any extraordinary circumstances exist in which a normally excluded action or project may have a significant effect.4, 5 To establish categorical exclusions, the Forest Service must determine that the categories of activities proposed for exclusion do not individually or cumulatively have a significant impact on the environment. In doing so, the public is to be provided an opportunity to review and comment on proposed categorical exclusions. Resource conditions that should be considered in determining whether extraordinary circumstances exist include, among other things, the existence of federally listed threatened or endangered species or designated critical habitat; congressionally designated wilderness areas; inventoried roadless areas; and archaeological sites or historic properties. The mere presence of one or more of these conditions does not preclude the use of a categorical exclusion. Rather, it is the degree of the potential effect of the proposed action on these conditions that determines whether extraordinary circumstances exist. The Forest Service may decide to prepare an environmental assessment for a project that could qualify for approval using a categorical exclusion. Figure 2 shows the NEPA process the Forest Service generally follows for assessing the likely environmental impacts of land management activities. As of 2003, the Forest Service had one categorical exclusion for use in approving projects involving certain vegetation management activities— timber stand or wildlife habitat improvement—that, still today, has no acreage limitation. In 2003, after reviewing and evaluating data on the environmental effects of vegetation management projects that had been carried out by the national forests, the Forest Service added four new vegetation management categorical exclusions, each of which has acreage limitations: (1) hazardous fuels reduction, (2) limited timber harvests of live trees, (3) salvage of dead or dying trees, and (4) removal of trees to control insects and disease. Table 1 summarizes the Forest Service’s five vegetation management categorical exclusions, including the four approved in 2003, along with any corresponding acreage limitations. (App. II provides a complete list of the Forest Service’s categorical exclusions.) The Forest Service requires agency officials responsible for making vegetation management project decisions to prepare and retain a file and decision memo for each vegetation management project approved using a categorical exclusion. Decision memos are to include, among other information, the title of each proposed action, an outline of the decision being made, a description of the public’s involvement in the decision- making process, and the date for implementing the project. Controversy has surrounded the Forest Service’s use of vegetation management categorical exclusions because, on the one hand, critics assert that the use of categorical exclusions is an attempt to circumvent NEPA by precluding the need to perform an EA or EIS. Supporters, on the other hand, have responded that current analysis and documentation requirements for an EA or EIS under NEPA are too burdensome and that the new categorical exclusions allow the Forest Service to more efficiently undertake routine vegetation management activities. Adding to this controversy, the Forest Service initially did not subject projects being approved using the five vegetation management categorical exclusions to a formal notice, comment, and appeal process as it did to projects being approved using an EA or EIS. As a result of litigation, the Forest Service now requires that vegetation management projects being approved using these categorical exclusions be subject to formal notice, comment, and appeal. Critics argue that such public involvement is essential for responsive decision making, while others argue the formal appeal process is unnecessarily burdensome and prevents the Forest Service from undertaking routine vegetation management activities in a timely manner. The debate surrounding the use of categorical exclusions centers on the types of vegetation management projects approved using categorical exclusions, how often the categorical exclusions are used, and how many acres are treated when using them. For calendar years 2003 through 2005, as shown in table 2, the Forest Service approved about 3,000 vegetation management projects to treat about 6.3 million acres. Of these projects, the Forest Service approved about 70 percent using categorical exclusions and the remaining projects using an EA or EIS. Although a majority of projects were approved using categorical exclusions, these projects accounted for slightly less than half of the total treatment acres because the size of these projects was much smaller than those approved using an EA or EIS. Our analysis of the project data also revealed that the total number of vegetation management projects approved, including those approved using categorical exclusions, varied over the 3-year period, while the number of treatment acres was relatively constant. As can be seen in figure 3, the number of projects approved using an EA or EIS varied little over the 3- year period; however, the number of projects approved using categorical exclusions increased from January 2003 through December 2004— primarily because of increased use of the four new categorical exclusions—and then decreased from January through December 2005. Forest Service officials said that any number of factors could have influenced the increase and subsequent decrease in the use of categorical exclusions over the 3-year period. However, given the relatively short period of time during which the four new categorical exclusions were in use, these officials said that it was not possible to speculate why the decrease had occurred. In contrast, as can be seen in figure 4, an analysis of the total treatment acres included in projects approved using an EA, EIS, or categorical exclusion did not reveal any notable change over the 3-year period. Additional analyses of the project data also revealed that the number of vegetation management projects approved, including those approved using categorical exclusions, varied by Forest Service region and forest. For example, of all vegetation management projects nationwide, Region 8—the Southern Region—accounted for about 29 percent, of which just over two- thirds were approved using categorical exclusions. In contrast, Region 10— Alaska—accounted for about 2 percent of all vegetation management projects, about 60 percent of which were approved using categorical exclusions. According to several Forest Service officials, the number of vegetation management projects approved and the type of environmental analysis used in approving them depended on the forest’s size, ecology, and location, as can be seen in the following examples: At the 2 million-acre Superior National Forest, a pine, fir, and spruce forest, in rural northeastern Minnesota, forest officials relied more on environmental assessments and environmental impact statements in approving projects because most of the projects were larger in terms of geographic coverage and more inherently complex; they used categorical exclusions only for a few smaller scale projects or projects undertaken in response to unanticipated events such as a wind storm that blew down trees on several hundred thousands of acres and that subsequently needed to be removed to reduce the risk of wildland fire. Of the 13 projects approved, forest officials used either environmental impact statements or environmental assessments in approving 8 and categorical exclusions in approving 5. At the 1.8 million-acre Ouachita National Forest, a pine and hickory forest in western Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma, 163 projects were approved—of which 119 were approved using categorical exclusions. Forest officials said the forest has a very active vegetation management program because, among other things, the types of trees located on the forest tend to regenerate quickly and are an excellent product for milling. In addition, a large timber harvest infrastructure is located nearby, which helps ensure that timber-sale contracts can be readily competed and awarded. At the 440,000-acre Cleveland National Forest, a mixed conifer and hardwood forest in Southern California, Forest Service officials said they prepared an EA or EIS infrequently for managing vegetation because the projects were necessarily small, given the forest’s limited size. Cleveland forest officials approved all of its 18 projects using categorical exclusions for calendar years 2003 through 2005. At the 28,000-acre Caribbean National Forest, a humid tropical forest in Puerto Rico, no vegetation management projects were approved. According to forest officials, the forest does not have an active vegetation management program because the forest focuses more on developing recreational sites and wildlife habitat and because the island does not have a commercial infrastructure to support harvesting or milling timber. Appendixes III and IV provide detailed information on the number of vegetation management projects and acres approved using different types of environmental analyses for calendar years 2003 through 2005.