"However, this disruptive litigation can directly harm species by delaying projects essential to conserving their habitat. In 2019, a Cottonwood-related lawsuit shut down forest restoration projects throughout New Mexico’s and Arizona’s national forests for more than a year. That delay appears to have contributed to a prescribed fire in New Mexico growing out of control and becoming last year’s Hermit’s Peak fire, which burned 340,000 acres of forest, destroyed wildlife habitat, and degraded water quality. No one wins if a species’ habitat goes up in smoke while the Forest Service is bogged down in litigation and paperwork."
