As you know, there is an obligation in the act that federal authorities examine projects that are non-designated and happen to be on federal lands.They need to determine that there are no significant adverse environmental effects of their actions.
Now, what we felt we needed to clarify was that when we said “federal lands”, did we mean only the portion of the project on federal lands, or did we mean there was an obligation by federal authorities to look at the whole project? The example you'd be looking at would perhaps be a transmission line that crosses federal lands, for instance, where several kilometres of it is on federal lands through the corner of a park. This amendment says that the only obligation of the federal authorities is to look at the portion on federal land; it's not appropriate that we look at the other portion.
This does not reduce the standards. This was fully the intent of the original provision. It's for greater clarity in case someone would think that the clause meant something broader than it really does mean.