The USFS approved the plan last September, proposing to reduce wildfire impacts in several communities in the Sierra Nevada through fuel control, timber sales, roadbuilding and other activities.

The project area includes communities affected by the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 residents and largely destroyed the town of Paradise.

The plaintiffs, including the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute and the Plumas Forest Project, say the 217,000-acre plan will be among the largest logging authorizations in the forest's history. It will include cutting old-growth trees up to 400 years old, removing key habitat for species that depend on mature forests, according to the complaint.

The agency overrode its governing management plan for the forest by allowing much more logging than previously acceptable, the suit says, arguing that timber sales should be limited to areas near affected communities.

The green groups say such changes required an EIS under NEPA, 42 U.S.C.A. § 4336(b)(1), which applies to agency actions with "reasonably foreseeable significant effect on the quality of the human environment."

According to the complaint, numerous studies suggest that the project would not effectively reduce wildfire risk and could increase public safety threats.

The suit seeks to vacate the EA as arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C.A. § 706(2), and halt all project activities until the USFS completes further environmental review.

Deborah A. Sivas of the Mills Legal Clinic at Stanford Law School represents the plaintiffs.