Prior to passage of NEPA, the U.S. Forest Service, bowing to political pressure from the timber industry, approved clearcuts on national forests that not only wreaked environmental havoc but trees were given away at pennies on the dollar, roads built to pull the logs out were subsidized by taxpayers and the public got stick trying to rehabilitate traumatized landscapes and the species living in them. NEPA changed that but now members of Congress are pushing through legislation that would give local forest managers discretion, without being subjected to rigorous public review, to cut trees if they think it might prevent wildfires.