SAN FRANCISCO— Conservation groups sued the Trump administration today for tossing out decades-old rules requiring public participation before approving logging, mining, drilling, road building and other projects in America’s national forests. The new U.S. Department of Agriculture rules also axed public notice and comment on federal bird flu responses and wildlife killing activities.

Environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act, one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, are often the only way people can get information and provide input about the thousands of projects up for federal approval each year on public lands.

“It’s illegal and unjust for Trump to shut out the American public while wrecking our national forests so mining, logging and oil companies can make a quick buck. We’re suing to make sure people have a say in what happens on their public lands, as they have for 50 years,” said Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Federal law gives us the right to know what our government is up to and to speak out when destructive projects threaten our national forests. Cutting the public out means the Trump administration can rubberstamp destructive projects that’ll devastate our forests and harm nearby communities.”

Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, challenges new Department of Agriculture procedures that make it nearly impossible for the public to learn about proposed industrial development on public lands, flag sensitive resources the agency has overlooked, and have a say in how air, water, wildlife and national forests should be protected.

Most development proposals within the 193 million-acre national forest system will no longer be announced until after those projects have been approved. Some, including projects to log more than 2,000 acres, may never come to light under the administration’s new fast-track procedures.

The challenged procedures also strip public participation in decisions related to the department’s wildlife killing activities through its Wildlife Services — a program known to kill more than 1 million native animals every year, including coyotes, bears, beavers, wolves and mountain lions. The new policies also eviscerate the already limited public involvement in and transparency around the federal government’s responses to major disease outbreaks in factory farms, including the USDA’s billion-dollar bird flu response.

Today’s lawsuit says the USDA unlawfully rushed its decision to eliminate public comment and other related procedures that had been mostly unchanged since the 1970s. The complaint also says the department violated the law by not seeking public comment before the new rules went into effect.

“Preserving the public’s right to comment on projects on public lands is not only about democracy in action — it also leads to better outcomes,” said Nat Shoaff, senior attorney at Sierra Club. “Instead, the Trump administration has sought to cut out the public’s voice as it fast tracks logging, mining, oil and gas drilling, and other industrial projects for large corporations. This not only undercuts clean energy development — and threatens some of our most treasured places — it’s against the law.”

The National Environmental Policy Act was designed to require the federal government to consider environmental harms before authorizing projects, and to include the public in that process. The 1970 law has been under threat since President Trump’s first day in office, when he issued an executive order directing the Council on Environmental Quality to coordinate a government-wide rollback of NEPA regulations.