Summit Pine Beetle Public Policy

Decoding Federal Land Management Terminology

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to integrate environmental values into their decision making processes by considering the environmental impacts of their proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions. To meet this requirement, federal agencies prepare a detailed statement known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The Environmental Protection Agency reviews and comments on EISs prepared by other federal agencies, maintains a national filing system for all EISs, and assures that its own actions comply with NEPA.

http://ceq.eh.doe.gov/nepa/regs/nepa/nepaeqia.htm

A Categorical Exclusion (CE) means a category of actions which do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment and which have been found to have no such effect in procedures adopted by a Federal agency in adoption of these procedures (Section 1507.3) and for which, therefore, neither an Environmental Assessment (EA) nor an environmental impact statement is required.

WUI=Wildland-Urban Interface

CWPP=Community Wildfire Protection Plan

HFRA=Healthy Forests Restoration Act

http://www.fs.fed.us/projects/hfi/