Washington ? The Forest Service on Wednesday changed the way it plans management of national forests, shortening the process by years but also eliminating the primary tool used by environmentalists to challenge logging and mining in protected forests.

The action, which the Forest Service said would cut its planning process from 10 years to two years, drew cautious applause from timber industry spokesmen, who hoped the change would speed approval for logging.

Conservation groups and ecology professors said the new policy took too much of a piecemeal approach to forest planning and would allow the timber and mining industries to severely damage national forests.

The major change by the Forest Service was to eliminate the requirement for Environmental Impact Statements in its overall planning for each of America’s 155 national forests. Those statements assessed the cumulative impact of all forest activities, such as logging, over 15 years. The statements were often used by environmental activists in court challenges to logging and mining.

The plans are the equivalent of zoning for forests and — until now — had been detailed on what could and could not be done.

But the new policy would replace the details with less specific goals and strategies that Forest Service officials said would be more flexible for handling unanticipated events such as wildfires.

Princeton University ecology professor David Wilcove, past North American president for the Society of Conservation Biology, said that by looking at individual actions, the forest service doesn’t have to face the fact that it may be allowing large-scale environmental damage.

Chris West, vice president for the American Forest Research Council, lauded the plan as moving the Forest Service away from being mired in bureaucracy.

“We’re going to have opportunities” for more timbering, West said. “What we have right now is gridlock.”