Federal Land Management: Appeals and Litigation

This document also available in PDF Image . The Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior each currently have a system of administrative appeals for most agency land management decisions. Critics assert that administrative and judicial appeals are stopping or unacceptably slowing the decision-making processes and the use of federal lands and resources; that many appeals are "frivolous" and brought for the purpose of frustrating rather than improving land management actions, and that appeals greatly increase the costs of management. Others respond that appeals have not been excessive or unwarranted, that few appeals are frivolous and there currently are means to deal with such appeals, and that Congress intended the federal land management systems to include review of the agencies' decisions in order to ensure public participation and that the agencies actually and adequately take into account the various factors and policies Congress intended be implemented. The December 5, 1996 draft of the "Public Land Management Responsibility and Accountability Restoration Act" would affect administrative and judicial appeals of land management decisions of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in several ways. Some of the bill provisions are procedural -- for example, those that would specify time limits within which certain actions must be taken. Other provisions would change the nature of the "appeal" action -- for example, those that would limit an appeal to the filing of a petition to amend a plan. Still other provisions would significantly modify the substance of the current land planning and management requirements and processes so that the grounds for appeals would be significantly changed. This report presents an overview of the current appeal systems of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, includes current statistics on judicial review of agency actions, and discusses how the draft bill might affect appeals and litigation of agency decisions. This overview was prepared at the request of the Subcommittee on Forests and Public Land Management of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources as background for one of its series of workshops on proposed legislation on federal land management.