Demonstrators gather outside the offices of U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, in Burlington on Wednesday, February 18, 2026. Vermonters are weighing the impacts of a federal bill — the Fix Our Forest Act — that would dramatically change environmental review processes and bring a big shift in the government’s approach to forest management in the state and across the country.  Proponents of the bill, including foresters and loggers, say that this bill will streamline projects in fire-prone areas and protect forests from wildfire and other disasters. Critics of the proposal, including some environmental lawyers and conservationists, say it could defang key environmental oversight laws.  The bill comes after President Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the environmentalist community in Vermont last spring by declaring wildfires a national emergency and issuing executive orders directing a 25% increase in timber production on public lands.  The Fix Our Forest Act passed the U.S. House, and will go before the full U.S. Senate for a vote. U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., was among the “yes” votes that moved the bill out of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee. This marked a  departure from his original position in July, in which he said the act “misses the mark” and criticized it for weakening environmental review laws, possibly ramping up both logging and ecological degradation. A key feature of the bill would more than triple the acreage cap for projects receiving so-called categorical exclusions, from up to 3,000 acres to 10,000 acres. These are actions taken by the U.S. Forest Service to allow a project to proceed without a full environmental review and multiple public comment periods under the National Environmental Policy Act. In the Green Mountain National Forest, every current project under review by the Forest Service between January and March of this year is proposed to receive a categorical exclusion. The Forest Service says projects receiving such categorical exclusions typically are restoration, infrastructure or special use permitting projects, which have narrow scope and inconsequential and predictable effects. The Fix Our Forest Act “doubles down on this failed deregulatory approach” to forest management, as Congress has created more categorical exclusions and opportunities to waive the National Environmental Policy Act review requirements in the past two decades, environmental groups told the Senate Agricultural Committee.  Vermont-based lawyer Andrew Cliburn says there has “been a real chipping away of NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, really, from both sides.” The debate about how best to manage forests has been going on for decades, pitting those who would let the forest grow undisturbed against the countervailing science that shows forests do better when they are managed.  In February, around 35 environmentalists gathered outside Welch’s Burlington office to protest his vote in committee. They demanded that he vote against the act when it reaches the Senate floor.  The bill “is pretending to be a solution while actually just taking away people’s ability to comment and opening up the lands to logging,” said Katayoun Lam, one of the protesters, who works for 350Vermont, a climate justice advocacy organization. In response to an email inquiry about the protest, Aaron White, a spokesperson for the senator, wrote that Welch plans to work with colleagues on the Senate Agriculture Committee to strengthen this bill and protect Vermont forests. “The Fix Our Forests Act confronts the increased threats of wildfires, which Vermont is not immune to,” White wrote in February. About 30 demonstrators gather for a protest outside the offices of U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, in Burlington on Wednesday, February 18, 2026. Demonstrators demanded that Welch vote against the Fix Our Forests Act. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger The recent protest follows an effort last fall by around 150 environmental groups, which signed on to a letter sent to the Senate Agriculture Committee condemning the bill. They argued that it is based on the “flawed assumption that indiscriminate logging across millions of acres of forests would serve to reduce or eliminate wildfire risk and protect communities.”  Chad Hanson, California-based research ecologist and director of the John Muir Project, said the data shows that wildfires burn at lower intensities in denser forests. Logging creates hotter, drier and windier conditions, which tend to exacerbate wildfire behaviors and spread wildfires more rapidly toward human communities, he said. His organization has signed on to the environmental groups’ letter. “It’s a Trojan Horse logging bill masquerading as a forest health and wildfire management measure,” Hanson said. “The science is very clear on this that the only effective way to protect communities from wildfires is to focus entirely on the communities themselves, not backcountry logging.” But a broad coalition of state politicians and environmental, forestry, hunting and wildfire prevention groups, together with energy and water interest groups, favor the legislation, according to letters sent to Senate leaders last fall.  “By pairing proactive land management with community protection, this legislation ensures that our forests, homes and families can thrive alongside fire rather than being consumed by it,” said Matt Weiner, founder and CEO at California-based advocacy organization Megafire Action, which signed on to the letter of support. The bill also limits judicial review opportunities by shortening the timeframe for groups to legally challenge projects to 150 days after the date of publication in the federal register.  Cliburn said the federal register is not checked frequently by the general public, and projects are posted there before a final decision notice. That means aspects of a project’s plans could change past the new statute of limitations timeline created by the potential legislation. Cliburn called it both “anti-democratic” and “anti-environment” to curtail the judicial branch’s role in reviewing government agencies’ projects.  Dana Doran, who heads a Northeast-based logging association, and Jack Bell, co-founder and general manager of forestry and logging company Long View Forest in Hartland, both visited Washington to advocate for the Fix Our Forest Act. They met with legislators from Maine and Vermont, including Welch, Bell said. Doran said the organization is supportive of the bill because it would expedite  timber sales without the threat of litigation. Doran said lawsuits by environmental groups slow down projects, increase cost and make it difficult to plan in the logging business. “We’re hopeful that the Senate will move the bill forward in the near future this session, so that we can have some common sense changes to how timber sales are conducted,” Doran said.  Welch wrote that he “recognized some of Vermonters’ concerns,” but that he also understands “the urgent need to support communities facing wildfire devastation.” The National Audubon Society has taken a middle road. The bird conservation organization opposed “harmful provisions” in the house version of the bill, but the Senate version of the bill put up some guardrails for the use of broadened governmental powers in management areas deemed to have wildfire risk.  Categorical exclusion already captures a wide net of projects under current regulations, said Zack Porter, Executive Director of Standing Trees. By expanding this exemption, he argued, the Fix Our Forest Act would allow the Forest Service to operate logging projects on public lands with a “blank check” and “very little public scrutiny.” Cliburn said the types of categorical exclusions that would come under the bill can open the door to other changes in regulations.  “Once there is some kind of exception to a general rule, the exception starts to swallow the rule, and so that’s what’s happened with (categorical exclusions) over the years,” he said. The recently proposed 2,770-acre Northern Escarpment Ecological Restoration and Fire Resilience Project is currently planned for a categorical exclusion. The project sparked controversy over its prescribed burns and potential herbicide use, among other issues.  Porter pointed out that the project is just 30 acres less than the 2,800 acre cut off to receive a proposed categorical exclusion, allowing the Forest Service to not go through the full environmental review process mandated under the National Environmental Protection Act.  Porter said that the project is still large scale and prescribed burns and potential herbicide application is “significant changes of use, and shouldn’t be taken so lightly,” and should not receive a categorical exclusion with “little public input and consideration of alternatives.” Ethan Ready, Forest Service spokesperson for the Green Mountain National Forest, wrote in an email response to the questions about categorical exclusion use and the Fix Our Forest Act that for years the Forest Service has worked with local officials, partners and landowners to meet forest management objectives.  “We take great pride in our process which is open, transparent and in the best interest of the public land that we are charged with managing,” Ready wrote. Correction: Jack Bell’s name and business was misrendered in a previous version of the story. Read the story on VTDigger here: Is Fix Our Forest Act a fix or a free pass for loggers?. ...read more read less