NEPA Attack

For over 50 years, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has been an empowering legal tool that allows communities in the United States to defend themselves against harmful government and industry actions. NEPA ensures that the federal government makes the best decision based on the best information while engaging and informing the public it serves.

For nearly as long, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has provided federal agencies with guidance, through binding regulations, to ensure NEPA is applied consistently and correctly across the federal government. 

However, the Trump Administration has taken a major step to weaken NEPA by eliminating the CEQ’s NEPA regulations, striking a blow at the heart of our nation’s bedrock environmental law.

Wild winters stand to win with more environmental review and climate-conscious alternatives to proposed projects on public lands. Without CEQ regulations requiring all agencies to follow a consistent interpretation of NEPA—including considerations of climate change, cumulative effects, and meaningful public engagement, and more—our public lands, the environment, and so much more are at risk.

The Interim Final Rule

On February 25, CEQ posted an “Interim Final Rule” removing the CEQ regulations that implement NEPA from the Code of Federal Regulations.

The stage was set for this action on January 20, when President Trump, in Executive Order 14154 (Unleashing American Energy), revoked a Carter-era Executive Order giving CEQ the authority to issue binding NEPA regulations. This Order had stood through both Republican and Democratic Administrations since 1977.

By posting an interim final rule, the Administration has sidestepped the standard rulemaking process normally required for a change of this magnitude.

Although there is a comment period (ending March 27), it is not expected that any amount of public comment will lead the Administration to reverse course. However, submitting a comment is still valuable to let the Administration know that you oppose the Interim Rule.

What happens next? The Impact on Public Lands and Environmental Reviews

The Interim Rule will go into effect—meaning that CEQ’s NEPA regulations will no longer be on the books—on April 11. At this point, each federal agency will be responsible for developing its own NEPA implementing regulations.  

For decades, CEQ’s NEPA regulations have provided direction for how the environmental impact analyses required by NEPA should take place, regardless of agency.

Without CEQ regulations, we are left with a random assortment of agency-specific NEPA interpretations. Agencies considering substantially similar projects may interpret and apply NEPA in wildly different ways. Projects that involve multiple agencies may be subject to different approaches to NEPA compliance. All this inconsistency will lead to:

• Unnecessary confusion for the public, project proponents, local, state, and Tribal governments, and the agencies themselves.
• Delays and litigation regarding the development of federal projects.
• Significant undermining of regulatory and management certainty.
• Inefficiency and roadblocks in decision-making, as uncertainty and inconsistency are never a recipe for speed or effectiveness—especially for complex projects.
• Reduced transparency into agency decision-making, running counter to the law.

The Step Backward

Winter Wildlands Alliance strongly opposes the move to drop CEQ’s NEPA regulations. We are also very concerned that the guidance accompanying the Interim Final Rule encourages agencies to use the weakened 2020 NEPA rule as framework for developing agency-specific NEPA regulations.

The 2020 NEPA Rule limited public participation, restricted the scope of environmental analyses, and was wholly intended to fast-track approval for development and infrastructure projects. For these reasons, and others, Wildlands Alliance was among the many organizations to challenge the 2020 rule.

Holding Agencies Accountable

Even without regulations for agencies to follow, CEQ must ensure that all federal agencies continue to adhere to NEPA’s principles of sound environmental review and analysis, including transparency and robust public participation, as outlined in the law.

Moving forward, Winter Wildlands Alliance will be tracking when and how the federal agencies we work with develop their unique NEPA regulations. Some, like the U.S. Forest Service, already have NEPA rules, but we expect these will be changed (for the worse) in the coming years. 

On Valentine’s Day, the White House fired thousands of federal employees, including many of the people formerly tasked with stewarding our public lands. These layoffs targeted employees within their “probationary period,” (1-2 years on the job) and veterans hired through non-competitive processes. Agencies affected include the Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Who was impacted?

Across the public land agencies, most of the people who lost their jobs were those working to keep public lands accessible, sanitary, and ecologically healthy, including:

• Entire trail crews maintaining paths for hikers, skiers, and snowshoes
• Rangers welcoming visitors to National Parks
• Recreation technicians with the thankless task of cleaning outhouses
• Plow drivers clearing roads and parking lots
• Field crews maintaining SNOTEL sites and weather stations
• Weed control specialists protecting ecosystems
• Many, many other “mission-critical” positions

Many of those fired were also trained wildland firefighters, essential to staffing up “Type 2” fire crews in the heat of fire season. In many cases, now-fired employees lived in agency housing and have now lost their homes in addition to their income  and other benefits. And, in many cases these were people who’d worked for the government for years, sometimes even decades, but were within their probationary period due to a change in status from a seasonal to permanent employee, a promotion, or taking a new job at a different agency.

Why were they fired?

Rather than thoughtfully considering how to achieve their goal of making the government run more efficiently, the White House chose to target probationary employees because it’s easy to fire them without justification and was an easy way to shrink the federal workforce.

Thus, rather than actually identifying, much less solving, any problems or inefficiencies within the federal workforce, these mass layoffs destabilized land management agencies, wasted millions in taxpayer dollars, and left public lands severely understaffed.

While some layoffs have been reversed due to Congressional pressure on the White House and impacts to public lands are getting a lot of news, we need to keep fighting. We need to keep the pressure on Congress to reclaim its role as a check on the Executive Branch, its role in determining how our tax dollars are spent, and get lawmakers to stand up for public lands by demanding that all of the employees who care for these lands be reinstated.

Historical Context: A Decade-Long Decline in Public Land Staffing

Even before these layoffs, land management agencies were severely underfunded and understaffed. Over the last ten years, staffing at land management agencies has steadily declined even as visitation has increased.

Since 2010, the Park Service has seen a 20% reduction in full-time staff, despite a 16% increase in visitation during the same period. More than 1,000 Park Service employees were fired on Valentines Day. The effects of this were felt immediately. For example, cars backed up for an hour and a half to enter Grand Canyon National Park over President’s Day weekend because four of the Park Rangers who work the entrance were terminated.

The Forest Service was already grappling with significant budget shortfalls for years and already faced staffing shortages this year due to the agency’s hiring freeze on seasonal employees implemented in October. The Forest Service was hit particularly hard by the February layoffs because the agency recently converted many longtime seasonal employees into permanent positions. Because most Forest Service recreation staff work seasonally and were already off the table for this year or were recently converted to permanent employees and lost their jobs on Valentines Day, the layoffs decimated Forest Service recreation program. Similar scenarios played out across the agency’s weed control, research, and restoration programs.

Where does this mean for public lands?

The full extent of the recent layoffs is still coming into focus—because the termination notices came from the White House the agencies themselves are still learning the extent of jobs lost. And, it’s widely understood that more layoffs are coming, leaving federal employees walking on eggshells, unsure of whether they will have a job from one day to the next. 

People will continue to flock to and recreate on public lands, but with limited staff to maintain recreation infrastructure or manage visitor impacts we will see:

• Outhouses filled and locked
• Toilet paper “flowers” blossoming across the landscape
• Trash pile up within and beyond campfire rings
• Impassable trails
• Escaped campfires growing into wildfires
• Infrastructure fall even further into disrepair
• Long-term impacts to ecological health
• Significant setbacks in scientific research

Nonprofits and the volunteers that they recruit have long been critical partners for public land agencies, but the non-profit community cannot fill the void left by a hollowed-out federal workforce. For one, volunteers are no substitute for professional crews. Second, much of the funding to support these stewardship and partnership programs was frozen or rescinded by the Trump Administration, forcing nonprofits to lay off or not hire the staff that would normally support public land agencies.

Setting the Stage for Public Land Sell-offs

To be clear, in addition to breaking the government, the ultimate goal of these actions is to sell off our public lands. Shrinking the workforce and leaving the public land agencies unable to meet their missions provides fodder for anti-public lands voices who argue that public lands would be better managed if transferred to the states or even sold to the private sector.

As we talked about ad nauseum during the first Trump administration, state lands are managed for profit, not public use, and states lack the resources to manage the vast federal land base. Thus, transferring federal public lands to the states is a quick stop on the road to privatization. 

Help Defend Public Lands

Without adequate staffing and resources, our experiences outside, wild winters, and the outdoor recreation economy will suffer. Congress and the Administration must take quick action to protect the workforce that keeps our public lands safe, accessible, and well cared for.

Using the form below, please write to your lawmakers right now. It’s quick and easy to ask them to push back against cuts to land management agencies and demand that our public land stewards be reinstated!

On February 3, 2025, a federal judge in North Dakota overturned the Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) Phase II regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The lawsuit, led by Iowa and North Dakota, was backed by 21 states seeking to block the 2024 regulations and restore the first Trump Administration’s controversial 2020 rules. These rules are already the subject of multiple lawsuits, including one in which Winter Wildlands Alliance is a plaintiff.

Winter Wildlands Alliance and 20 other organizations went to bat to defend the Phase II rules as defendant-intervenors in this case, with representation by Earthjustice and Silvix Resources.

Background

Often called the Magna Carta of environmental law, NEPA requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of their decisions. It ensures transparency, gives the public the right to weigh in before government decisions are made, and embeds environmental values in these decisions.

In April 2024, the CEQ finalized new “Phase II” regulations to modernize NEPA’s the fifty-year old law. These “Phase II” regulations gave the public a stronger voice in public lands management and government decisions that affect public health. They also strengthened requirements for assessing climate and environmental justice impacts, while centering science in government decision-making. These regulations complemented the “Phase I” regulations CEQ issued in 2022, which restored basic environmental safeguards that had been upended by the 2020 rules.

What did the Court rule?

The North Dakota court rejected the states’ complaints over the government’s ability to consider environmental justice and climate change impacts. Instead, the court’s decision focused on a different issue—whether CEQ has authority to issue binding regulations at all.

Until recently, this was not an issue that had been up for debate. For decades, agencies, Congress, and federal courts at every level had treated CEQ’s NEPA regulations as binding. However, in November 2024, a D.C. appellate court questioned this authority for the first time. Following that lead, both the D.C. court and the North Dakota court ruled that Congress never gave CEQ authority to issue binding regulations. As a result, the court vacated the Phase II rules, meaning NEPA implementation now defaults to the 2020 rules, as amended by the 2022 Phase I regulations and changes Congress made through the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Furthermore, the North Dakota court found that the President could not claim such authority through an executive order or use executive orders to circumvent the laws that Congress enacts. The Court wrote:

“People fought to separate these powers in a new form of government. People died for this new government because they saw what happened when all the power was held in one hand. Power can be taken by force, given, or lost inch by inch. It is the job of Congress to enact the law. It is the job of the President to enforce the law.”   

Since his January 20, 2025 inauguration, President Trump has issued dozens of executive orders, and taken other actions that violate this mandate—including several that further weaken NEPA and other environmental laws. One of these orders, EO 14154 (“unleashing American energy”) revokes a Carter-era executive order that gave CEQ the authority to issue binding NEPA regulations. 

What’s Next for NEPA?

Hilary Eisen, Winter Wildlands Alliance’s Policy Director explains:

“This court’s actions undermine NEPA and will weaken federal environmental reviews, putting public lands, air, waters, and people at risk.“

“But, the Court has also reminded Congress that it is their job—not the President’s—to enact laws and that an administration does not have the authority to reverse any law on its own.”