Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Forest Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>36 CFR Part 218</CFR> <RIN>RIN 0596-AD69</RIN> <SUBJECT>Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Forest Service, Agriculture (USDA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for public comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service is proposing to amend its Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process regulations. These regulations establish the process by which the public may file objections seeking administrative review for projects and activities implementing land management plans on national forests. The Forest Service is amending these regulations to consolidate and streamline processes, increase efficiency, and better align with the Agency's statutory obligations and recent rescissions and revisions to National Environmental Policy Act regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received in writing by March 9, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments, identified by RIN 0596-AD69, should be sent via one of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronically (preferred):</E> through the Federal eRulemaking Portal: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov;</E> or • <E T="03">Mail:</E> addressed to the Director, Ecosystem Management Coordination, 201 14th Street SW, Mailstop 1108, Washington, DC 20250-1124. Comments should be confined to issues pertinent to the proposed rule, should explain the reasons for any recommended changes, and should reference the specific section and wording being addressed, where possible. All timely comments, including names and addresses when provided, will be placed in the record and will be available for public inspection and copying. Comments may be viewed on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> by searching for RIN 0596-AD69. Please do not include in your comments information of a confidential nature, such as sensitive personal information or proprietary information. Please note that comments containing any routine notice about the confidentiality of the communication will be treated as public comments that may be made available to the public, notwithstanding the inclusion of the routine notice. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Joshua White, Acting Director, Ecosystem Management Coordination, 202-205-0650. Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may call 711 to reach the Telecommunications Relay Service and then provide the phone number of the person named as a point of contact for further information. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Forest Service is proposing to amend the Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process regulations at 36 CFR part 218 (hereinafter 36 CFR 218). The proposed amendments conform to statutory requirements for predecisional administrative review in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (Pub. L. 108-148; 16 U.S.C. 6515), the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, section 428 (Pub. L. 112-74), and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014, section 431 (Pub. L. 113-76). The revised regulations also align the administrative review process with applicable National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations and simplify and streamline processes to ensure the Forest Service conducts administrative review in a timely and efficient manner. Certain Forest Service decisions have been subject to an appeal process since 1907 and underwent several changes from that time to the early 1990s. In 1992, Congress enacted the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriation Act of Fiscal Year 1993 (commonly referred to as the “Appeals Reform Act”) (Pub. L. 102-381; 106 Stat. 1419). Section 322 of the Appeals Reform Act required the Forest Service to establish a notice and comment process for proposed actions implementing land management plans and modified the Agency's existing appeals process. In 2003, in response to the Appeals Reform Act, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) required the Secretary of Agriculture to promulgate “regulations to establish a predecisional administrative review process” to “serve as the sole means by which a person can seek administrative review regarding an authorized hazardous fuel reduction project on Forest Service land.” 16 U.S.C. 6515(a)(1). For hazardous fuel reduction projects conducted under HFRA, the HFRA regulations replaced subsections (c), (d), and (e) of section 322 of the Appeals Reform Act that required a notice, comment, and post-decision administrative appeal process for proposed actions of the Forest Service relating to certain land and resource management projects. Specifically for projects subject to HFRA, section 105 required the Secretary to create a process whereby eligible parties could participate in a predecisional administrative review process “after the completion of the [relevant project's] environmental assessment or environmental impact statement” but before “the date of the issuance of the final decision approving the project” (16 U.S.C. 6515(a)(2), (3)). On December 23, 2011, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 (Pub. L. 112-74). Section 428 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act expanded the scope of the HFRA predecisional administrative review process to include projects other than those authorized under HFRA. It requires the Secretary to “apply section 105(a)” of the HFRA, “providing for a predecisional objection process, to proposed actions of the Forest Service concerning projects and activities implementing land and resource management plans developed under the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974” and “documented with a Record of Decision or Decision Notice. . .” <E T="03">Id.</E> The 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act section 428 also directs that HFRA section 105 predecisional administrative review be applied in lieu of subsections (c), (d), and (e) of section 322 of the Appeals Reform Act. Congress formally repealed the Appeals Reform Act in the 2014 Farm Bill (Pub. L. 113-79 title VIII, subpart A (128 Stat. 913, February 7, 2014) at section 8006). The 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act further clarified that, “if the Chief of the Forest Service determines an emergency situation exists for which immediate implementation of a proposed action is necessary, the proposed action shall not be subject to the predecisional objection process, and implementation shall begin immediately after the Forest Service gives notice of the final decision for the proposed action.” <E T="03">Id.</E> The Forest Service thereafter amended its Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process regulations in compliance with section 428 on March 27, 2013 (78 FR 18481). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Need for Rulemaking</HD> Since these regulations were last amended in 2013, more recent statutory and regulatory actions require the Forest Service to further amend its administrative review process. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014, section 431 (Pub. L. 113-76) exempts projects or activities from the predecisional administrative review process that are categorically excluded from documentation in an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement. The proposed rule adds this provision in section 218.5, <HD SOURCE="HD2">Projects and Activities Not Subject to the Objection Process</HD> On April 11, 2025, the Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued an Interim Final Rule rescinding its NEPA implementing procedures at 40 CFR parts 1500 through 1508. On July 3, 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published an Interim Final Rule revising its NEPA regulations at 7 CFR subtitle A part 1b (hereinafter 7 CFR 1b) and rescinding Forest Service NEPA regulations at 36 CFR 220. The 36 CFR 218 administrative review process is inconsistent with applicable NEPA regulations. This proposed rule amending 36 CFR 218 aligns the predecisional administrative review process with the 7 CFR 1b regulations. The Department acknowledges that the final rule for the 7 CFR 1b regulations has not yet been published. To ensure proposed changes align with the final Department NEPA regulations, the effective date for the final rule for proposed revisions to 36 CFR 218 will occur after the 7 CFR 1b final rule has been published. It is the Department's intention that these regulations are to be applied in a manner consistent with the applicable NEPA regulations. In addition to the updates required by statutory and regulatory changes, the Forest Service is proposing other revisions to 36 CFR 218 to provide for a more efficient and effective administrative review process. Experience in implementing the objection process over the last 12 years has demonstrated that reviewing objection issues is time-consuming for both the public and Agency staff, often resulting in lengthy documents and delays. The current comment and objection processes outlined in the regulations add, at a minimum, 120 to 150 days for an EA and FONSI and 135 to 165 days for an EIS and ROD. This does not account for additional time needed for the responsible official to respond to instructions, if any, provided by the objection reviewing officer. Neither HFRA nor the other statutes governing the administrative review process mandate a specific length for the comment or objection periods. The Forest Service has examined the various timeframes associated with the comment and objection periods and proposes reducing them to a more reasonable length to align with recent statutory and regulatory changes to NEPA and avoid delays in project analysis and environmenta ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 80k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━