Siskiyou County has watched the timber industry collapse for thirty years while NEPA litigation, administrative delay, and federal forest mismanagement turned working forests into wildfire fuel. The communities that are left have learned one thing: the environmental review process, frustrating as it is, is the only legal tool that forces federal agencies to justify their decisions to the people who live with the consequences.
The January 2025 Point Reyes settlement is an attack on that tool. NPS publicly stated it could issue the 2025 Record of Decision “without additional environmental analysis because the new plan consists of elements contained in previously considered alternatives.” My federal amicus brief (Niman v. Burgum, No. 3:25-cv-01976-MMC) demonstrates that this statement is factually false: the administrative record contains no previously considered alternative corresponding to what the 2025 settlement actually did. When an agency’s justification for bypassing NEPA is contradicted by its own record, that action is arbitrary and capricious as a matter of law.
Rep. Bruce Westerman’s House Natural Resources Committee launched a formal investigation in April 2025. His concerns about transparency and NEPA compliance are precisely the concerns Siskiyou County communities have raised about federal forest management for decades. The brief I filed gives that investigation legal backing in a federal court.
The precedent this settlement establishes, that federal agencies can use private settlement funds and confidential terms to bypass a completed environmental review, is a direct threat to every community in Siskiyou County that depends on a meaningful NEPA process for decisions about their forests, their water, and their jobs.
Gregory Burgess,
San Rafael | Candidate, CA-2 (No Party Preference)
| gregoryburgessforcongress.com
