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Adaptive management, a favorite cause of Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett, would allow agencies to change decisions as circumstances change or as new scientific information becomes available. While allowing adaptive management, the rule specifies agencies must analyze the effects of such an action, said Bob Dreher, vice president for conservation law at Defenders of Wildlife. "It doesn't substitute for NEPA," he said.

Interior had allowed the use of adaptive management in its NEPA handbook, but regulations are given more weight in federal court than department manuals, a spokesman said. Interior also noted the proposal allows for public comment on the changes. The comment period ends March 3.

"We believe that these changes in our procedures will better fulfill the purposes of the act and lead to better decisions on the ground," Scarlett said in a statement.

In its NEPA proposal, Interior also adopts guidance language from the White House Council on Environmental Quality regarding cumulative effects that has been a sticking point between the Bush administration and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The proposal states that past actions must be "relevant" in illuminating or predicting the direct or indirect effects of the proposed action. Interior only wants to focus on past actions that are, "relevant and useful because they have a significant cause-and-effect relationship with the direct and indirect effects of the proposal for bureau action and its alternatives."

In a 2005 guidance memo , CEQ said it does not interpret NEPA as requiring a listing of past actions or a study of the individual effects of each project. NEPA analyses are meant to be "forward-looking" and focusing on the potential impacts of agency proposals, not a study of individual past actions, CEQ stated.

However, the 9th Circuit has disagreed, blocking Forest Service projects the court felt lacked enough study of past logging activity and the cumulative effects of those projects.

"The CEQ regulations ... do not require bureaus to catalogue or exhaustively list and analyze all individual past actions," Interior's proposed rule states. Simply because information about past actions may be available or obtained with reasonable effort does not mean that it is relevant and necessary to inform decisionmaking."

'Restrained' approach

Interior is taking a different approach to NEPA than congressional Republicans or the Forest Service, Dreher said.

In 2005, former House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) launched its NEPA task force and attempted to limit opportunities for public input and access to the courts in areas including logging and oil and gas drilling.

Instead, Interior is following the direction of CEQ and trying to reform agency practice and integrate adaptive management, Dreher said, "to make the NEPA process a little more flexible so they can incorporate more collaborative planning."

The Interior proposal is "restrained," compared to the Forest Service's proposed changes to its NEPA regulations, Dreher noted.

"The public at large still gets a full opportunity to participate in the NEPA process, and they're still using NEPA itself," he said. "Unlike the Forest Service, they're keeping the core of NEPA alive through planning and analysis."

The Forest Service is attempting to change its national planning rule to exempt individual forest plans from an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement (EIS), a plan that has been blocked once by a federal judge in California (Greenwire, Aug. 15).

In addition, the Forest Service in August proposed new NEPA regulations, that while adopting similar adaptive management changes to Interior, would also change the classes of actions that require the more extensive EIS to actions that "normally" require an EIS. Currently, the studies are required for proposals to carry out or approve aerial application of chemical pesticides, proposals that would substantially alter the undeveloped character of an inventoried roadless area, and proposals for major federal actions with major environmental impacts.

Click here to view the proposed rule changes.