Cutting red tape and streamlining project work have been marching orders for the U.S. Forest Service throughout the first year of the second Trump administration. Last week, a federal court ruling on a Greater Yellowstone landscape project showed how far those directives can backfire.  …Initially proposed in 2020, it received a decision notice in 2023. Opponents referred to it by its acronym, SPLAT, and promptly sued to block it. In his December 11 opinion, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy wrote that South Plateau failed to meet requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act and Endangered Species Act. But he added the “primary challenge concerns the project’s conditions-based management approach.” Molloy generally agreed with the plaintiffs’ concern. “This approach,” he said, “conflates a promise of future statutory compliance with actual compliance.”