This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 27th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When environmentalist groups sue the U.S. Forest Service over actions they would like to prevent, it may come as some surprise to learn

that the feds and taxpayers often foot the bill for the lawsuits.

Holly Frettwell is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center. We spoke today in Bozeman, Montana.

What problem was the Equal Access to Justice Act supposed to solve?

The Equal Access to Justice Act was... supposed to

my understanding,

to my understanding, to provide funds for those individuals

that can't afford to take a stand in an area where they are being

discriminated against or are treated unfairly and I'm sure there are ways in which this law is used and it is providing for some of the answers

that they're looking for and helping those individuals that don't have the same means to try to take something to court and get issues

resolved where they are being harmed. But when we look at our public lands, what

it's actually doing is it's providing advocacy groups with funds to go against the types of

actions that are Forest Service and other agencies are trying to take on to manage the landscapes

when they have a different perception of how those

landscapes should be managed. So how does a how does this play out? What what would a

group do or an individual or whoever wanted to make use of this act in order to achieve some goal or prevent

some action.

How does that actually play out in the context of forestry?

In the context of forestry, if the Forest Service proposes a plan and they want to, let's say they want to harvest some timber,

or maybe it's what we call a restoration harvest where they're trying to remove some dead tender timber or some insect infestation or trying to reduce the risk of

...