The Action Versus No Action Act Passes House Natural Resources Committee

Washington, D.C. - H.R. 184, the Action Versus No Action Act, has passed the House Natural Resources Committee. The legislation represents a practical step toward restoring active management to federal forests, reducing wildfire risk, and protecting communities increasingly living under constant threat of wildfire.

"The choice before Congress is clear," said Congressman McClintock. "We can continue down the current path - studying forests until they burn - or we can restore common sense and give land managers the ability to protect forests before more communities are lost to catastrophic wildfire."

Congressman McClintock delivered remarks at the House Natural Resources Committee in support of the legislation:

H.R. 184

Action v. No Action

September 15, 2026

Mr. Chairman:

An untended forest is no different than an untended garden. It will grow and grow until it chokes itself to death and then fall victim to disease, pestilence, drought and ultimately catastrophic fire. That's how nature gardens. She doesn't care that it takes centuries for a forest to re-grow. Nature has all the time in the world. We mortals do care.

So at the turn of the 20th Century, we set up land management agencies to do the gardening instead. We sent foresters out every year to mark off surplus timber and then auctioned it off to logging companies that paid us to remove it. A quarter of those revenues went to local communities and the rest went back into the forests. The result was healthy, fire-resistant forests, thriving local economies, and a steady stream of revenues.

Then, in the 1970's we began passing laws that have made active forest management endlessly time consuming and ultimately cost-prohibitive. It now takes an average of five years to complete an environmental review before we can begin to remove excess timber. Timber harvests off the federal lands have fallen 80 percent, the number of mills have plummeted and fire has returned to remove the excess. In the last ten years, we have lost a quarter of our national forests to catastrophic fire.

One of the hallmarks of this bureaucratic paralysis-by-analysis is requiring every conceivable alternative to a routine forest thinning project to be painstakingly evaluated. The result is that projects become trapped in an endless cycle of study, objections, re-study, appeals, and litigation while hazardous conditions worsen year after year.

Doing nothing is not a neutral decision. It is a management decision - and increasingly, it is the most destructive decision possible.

Every year we delay treatment, forests become more overgrown and stressed. Every year of delay means hotter fires, larger fires, more destruction, and higher suppression costs borne by taxpayers.

The bill simply says that for certain hazardous fuels reduction and forest management projects, agencies should focus their environmental review on two alternatives: the proposed action and the no-action alternative.

This legislation does not eliminate environmental review. It does not waive environmental protections. It does not silence public participation. What it does is establish a more efficient and focused review process so agencies can respond to the wildfire emergency before another community burns to the ground.

It applies only to projects located in high-risk wildfire areas or projects developed through collaborative community-based processes. These include projects proposed through resource advisory committees, collaborative partnerships, or community wildfire protection plans.

The opponents of active forest management often argue that streamlining review somehow threatens the environment. But the greatest threat to our forests today is not responsible forest management - but the lack of responsible forest management - and the catastrophic wildfire that results.

For years, we had been trying to complete the Trestle project in the El Dorado National Forest - a forest thinning project on a tract of land that menaced the town of Grizzly Flat. The project had been held up by endless NEPA study and litigation for over a decade. When the Caldor fire reached it in August of 2021, that tract exploded out of control and utterly destroyed the town. I stood in the center of Grizzly Flat the day after the fire - but there was no way to know where the center was. Everything had been levelled in all directions - there was no point of reference.

There is nothing environmentally responsible about allowing millions of acres of forest to incinerate or entire towns to be destroyed because agencies were trapped in procedural delay.

The choice before Congress is clear. We can continue down the current path - studying forests until they burn - or we can restore common sense and give land managers the ability to protect these forests from the inevitable result of morbid overgrowth.

It represents a practical step toward restoring active management to our federal forests, reducing wildfire risk, and protecting communities increasingly living under constant threat.

I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense bill and help restore responsible stewardship to America's forests before more communities are lost to catastrophic wildfire.

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