California Chaparral Institute v. Board of Forestry & Fire Protection

Reversing a California Superior Court, the California Court of Appeal ruled that the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection violated CEQA when it approved the California Vegetation Treatment Program, which would use controlled burning and other techniques to decrease the types of vegetation that fuel wildfires. The Court of Appeal found that substantial evidence did not support the State Board’s findings that the Program would avoid adverse effects on native chaparral and coastal sage shrub from “type conversion,” which refers to a replacement of native shrub species with non-native plants, and that evaluation and mitigation of any adverse effects could be “tiered” to project proponents’ future reviews. The appellate court said the State Board was “required under CEQA to consider the adverse environmental effects of type conversion—most specifically, the increased wildfire danger.” The Court of Appeals’ decision did not address the climate change-specific arguments made by the challengers in their original petition.

Two conservation organizations challenged state approvals of the California Vegetation Treatment Program, which is intended to serve as a component of California’s plan to reduce wildlife risk. The causes of action in the petition were for violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and Section 4483 of the Public Resources Code, which requires special consideration for protection of chaparral and coastal sage scrub plant communities that are threatened by wildfires. The petition alleged that the CEQA review failed to adequately analyze greenhouse gas emission impacts, including failure to analyze “net loss of carbon sequestration with the removal of vegetation and damage to the ability of soils to sequester carbon as a result of vegetation treatment activities.” The petitioners also alleged a “failure to account for plant community extirpation due to projected climate change impacts and how the cumulative impact of their treatments will accelerate those impacts.”