A controversial proposal to remove trees and vegetation from a popular hiking and camping destination in Los Padres National Forest is back on the table after a federal court ruled in favor of the U.S. Forest Service.

Supporters say the work will protect the area, but opponents fear it will do more harm than good.

“We are in a wildfire crisis and must take immediate action to protect our forests in Southern California,” said Los Padres Forest Supervisor Chris Stubbs. “The Ninth Circuit decision allows us to save the remaining trees on Reyes Peak from the devastating effects of a stand-replacing wildfire and create a healthy, resilient forest on the mountain.”

Opponents disagree with the ruling and hope someone else will intervene to stop the Reyes Peak (aka Pine Mountain) Forest Health Project.

“We are committed to doing everything we can to protect Pine Mountain, including asking our local elected officials to intervene,” said Ben Pitterle, Los Padres ForestWatch director of Advocacy and Field Operations. “There’s still time for the Forest Service to come to the table and consider better solutions that respect the forest and community’s wishes.”

In 2022, a coalition filed lawsuits against the Forest Service on the grounds that the logging and chaparral clearing project would violate environmental laws, harm vulnerable wildlife, and do irreparable damage to intact roadless areas of the forest. They also argued that the project went against scientific evidence regarding fire ecology and community wildfire protection. The groups appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

The ruling, filed last month, gives the Forest Service approval to use heavy equipment to cut and potentially sell trees and grind native chaparral across 755 acres on the top of Pine Mountain.

“The court’s ruling is a shocking blow, but we’re not deterred in our commitment to do everything we can to protect Pine Mountain,” said Jeff Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch. “This project exemplifies the misguided ‘rake-the-forest’ policy that began under the last Trump administration and will only worsen over the next four years.”

In approving the Forest Service’s Reyes Peak Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project, the court ruling called plaintiffs’ arguments “unpersuasive.”

Plaintiffs said that three resource conditions exist that require the Forest Service to conduct more in-depth environmental reviews. They said the Forest Service used “loopholes” to not properly evaluate the project’s potential impact on religious or cultural sites, the removal of large trees in the SespeFrazier Inventoried Roadless Area, and the existence of potential wilderness. However, the court concluded that the agency properly analyzed each of these resource conditions as required by law.

The work can begin as soon as project funds are secured, barring any further intervention.

“With hundreds of smaller, immature seedlings sprouting in the shadow of decades-old healthy trees, the risk to healthy stands increases by the day,” said Andrew Madsen, public affairs officer for Los Padres National Forest.

Officials say the Reyes Peak Forest Health Project will protect an area that is at risk due to overstocking and the devastating impacts of disease and insect infestation. The project is within a federally designated Insect and Disease Treatment Area where declining forest health conditions have put the area at risk for substantial tree mortality over the next 15 years.

The primary goal of the project is to reduce tree densities and promote forest resilience to insect and disease, persistent drought, and wildfire. To address these threats, professional Forest managers will selectively thin specific areas across 755 acres that extend along Pine Mountain between state Highway 33 and Reyes Peak in Ventura County.

“The ‘disease’ the Forest Service is usually talking about is tree mortality from native species of bark beetles that have been regulating forest growth for millions of years,” Pitterle responded. “As we pointed out in our detailed technical comments to the Forest Service back in 2020, their tree cutting proposal would very likely kill far more trees than would be killed naturally by bark beetles or drought.”

The Forest Service strongly disagrees with that assessment, as well as the allegation that it used loopholes to avoid necessary studies.

“Congress created Categorical Exclusions to identify actions that do not have a significant impact on the environment and do not require preparing a lengthy environmental analysis,” Madsen said. “Referring to CEs as ‘loopholes’ is disingenuous and misleading. The Forest Service is following current law and science in determining how best to implement the 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy.”

Plaintiffs Los Padres ForestWatch, Keep Sespe Wild Committee, Earth Island Institute, American Alpine Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Patagonia Works, and California Chaparral Institute were joined by the city of Ojai and county of Ventura in the failed attempt to stop the plan.

“We do not believe that a project with this much impact or with this much opposition from the public, including tribes, scientists, and elected leaders should qualify for the Categorical Exclusion loophole,” Pitterle said.

Opponents point out that the project area is located on ancestral Chumash lands that are historically and culturally important to Indigenous peoples across the region, as well as being popular with locals and tourists for a range of recreational activities. It also includes designated critical habitat for the endangered California condor, and is home to other sensitive wildlife, rare plants, old-growth conifer forests, and unique ecosystems.

Conservation organizations, Indigenous groups, scientists, businesses, local governments, and members of the public collectively submitted 16,000 comment letters requesting more robust environmental review of the proposed work, according to the coalition of opponents.

Many comments submitted on this plan voiced concerns about the use of heavy equipment to cut trees and grind down shrubs. Opponents say the Forest Service “refused to address these concerns” and did not make any “meaningful” changes to the project before approving it.

But the Forest Service says those responses are not an accurate representation of public opinion. 

“The vast majority of comments received were submitted through a third-party website to ‘share their thoughts’ by submitting a form letter,” Madsen said. “These comments are not considered ‘unique’ in that they use a submission template provided by the third party. In addition, many of the direct emails received by our office came from phony email accounts, which we discovered when our responses to those emails were undeliverable.”

The project plans to reduce hazardous surface, ladder and crown fuels, and will include prescribed fire, piling and burning. Treating these areas is supposed to reduce competition, improve the health of the remaining trees, and increase the overall average stand diameter. Trees between the 24-inch and 64-inch diameter would be retained unless they pose a safety or infestation risk.

This project is said to align with the U.S. Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy. As part of this strategy, the agency will work with states, counties, tribes and other partners to address wildfire risks to critical infrastructure, protect communities, and make forests more resilient, officials said.

There are alternative options that opponents believe could improve this project and reduce its impacts.

“These are things that we, and thousands of others, have been advocating for the Forest Service to consider all along throughout our years of engagement on this issue,” Pitterle said. “Unfortunately, the public process has failed, and the Forest Service has been fixated on a single-outcome mindset. Intervention from elected leaders may be essential at this point.”