Trump wants more logging in national forests. Here’s what that could mean for WA

TACOMA – President Donald Trump has instructed federal agencies to increase logging on national forests nationwide, including in Washington state, counter to decades of environmental policy and protections.

A memo from the Secretary of Agriculture issued earlier this month declared nearly 60% of all national forestland to be in a state of emergency and said it is vital to reverse “heavy-handed Federal policies (that) have prevented full utilization” of domestic timber resources and “increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security.”

What will that mean for Washington?

The Evergreen State is home to five national forests: Olympic National Forest, Colville National Forest, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and the Okanogan & Wenatchee National Forests.

Officials with those national forests, in addition to the Forest Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture, did not answer questions from The News Tribune about how many acres of those forests were previously scheduled to be logged this year, nor how many acres are logged annually. They also did not answer questions about how and when that logging could change in light of the Trump administration’s push to increase timber production agencywide by 25% over five years.

The Forest Service also remained silent about how it would address public concerns about the lifting of the usual requirements for public comment and environmental review for protection of endangered species and cultural resources.

“The USDA Forest Service stands ready to fulfill the Secretary’s vision of productive and resilient national forests outlined in the memorandum. In alignment with the Secretary’s direction, we will streamline forest management efforts, reduce burdensome regulations and grow partnerships to support economic growth and sustainability,” USDA spokesperson Larry Moore said in an email Tuesday. “Active management has long been at the core of Forest Service efforts to address the many challenges faced by the people and communities we serve, and we will leverage our expertise to support healthy forests, sustainable economies and rural prosperity for generations to come.”

While the timber and wood products industry welcomes the Trump administration’s efforts to increase logging, conservation groups and the state Department of Natural Resources decried the move as political bluster that, if implemented, could irreparably harm forests and wildlife for generations to come.

As of Thursday, it remained unclear what Trump’s directives would mean for Washington forests, although a national plan is expected to be developed within the next 30 days. As previously reported by The News Tribune, the Trump administration’s efforts to increase logging comes as the administration lays off thousands of forest employees who would be the ones assisting with the work.

The federal government is the largest landowner in Washington state, owning 9.5 million acres of forestland, according to the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

What is the Trump administration pushing for?

Trump passed an executive order on March 1 calling for the “immediate expansion of American timber production,” saying that the United States “has an abundance of timber resources that are more than adequate to meet our domestic timber production needs,” but “heavy-handed Federal policies” have left the us reliant on foreign producers and “impeded the creation of jobs and prosperity, contributed to wildfire disasters, degraded fish and wildlife habitats, increased the cost of construction and energy, and threatened our economic security.”

The order called for the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, through the Director of the Bureau of Land Management and the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, to issue new or updated guidance to increase timber production “and sound forest management, reduce time to deliver timber and decrease timber supply uncertainty” through the Good Neighbor Authority contracting agreement and agreements with Native American tribes within 30 days.

The order also called for increasing the speed of approving forestry projects, setting targets for the annual amount of timber from federal lands to be offered for sale over the next four years and “reduce unnecessarily lengthy processes and associated costs related to administrative approvals for timber production, forest management and wildfire risk reduction treatments.”

The Forest Service manages 144 million forested acres in 43 states, and forest plans identify about 43 million acres suitable for timber production, said USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins in a memorandum April 3. Over the past five years, the Forest Service has sold an average 3 billion board feet annually, Rollins said.

National forests “are in crisis due to uncharacteristically severe wildfires, insect and disease outbreaks, invasive species and other stressors whose impacts have been compounded by too little active management” in addition to overgrown forests and a growing number of homes in the wildland-urban interface, Rollins said. He said the United States needs to take “immediate action” to mitigate risk.

Chris French, the deputy chief of the national forest system for the USDA, said in a memo April 3 that increasing timber production would “improve both the prosperity of rural America and the health of our forests” as well as support “forest product industry partners.” He directed all regional foresters to increase timber production by 25% over the next four to five years. French also directed district rangers and forest supervisors to “utilize direct timber sale opportunities with interested purchasers operating on and around forests.”

Commissioner Upthegrove skeptical

Dave Upthegrove, the newly elected commissioner of public lands for the Washington DNR, told The News Tribune on Wednesday he is worried about the Trump administration’s logging plans but said, “I think it’s a lot of bluster and political positioning.”

Upthegrove said DNR manages state-owned lands, not federal lands, but it work closely with the federal government and Forest Service through the Good Neighbor Agreement. Although Upthegrove said thinning forests to reduce fuel for wildfires and harvesting timber “in a thoughtful way” on federal lands “isn’t in and of itself a bad thing,” he’s concerned about the way the Trump administration proposes going about it.

“We need to keep in mind, it’s an executive order. It’s just direction from the president to executive branch agencies. It doesn’t make something happen, and they will need to comply with federal environmental laws like the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act. Even if the president doesn’t want to, the president can’t unilaterally overrule laws passed by Congress,” he said. “They also would need to staff up and do this work, and as far as I can tell, they’ve been busy firing Forest Service employees with massive layoffs, and done bluntly and haphazardly at these agencies. I know from our experience, if you want to harvest more timber, you need to hire more foresters. There’s a whole chain of people involved in preparing a timber sale, auctioning the sale, managing that whole process, so you can’t reduce your staff and increase your output. So I think it’s going to be a long time before we see logging trucks clogging I-5.”

Upthegrove said if the president tries to take environmental shortcuts, environmental groups would likely sue and that could get snared in court for a decade.

“I don’t see any signs of them being efficient and effective as a federal administration and getting things done, and, in fact, they’re going the opposite direction, creating chaos and uncertainty,” he said.

Upthegrove said DNR has a “great working relationship” with its federal partners, but, “We’re not going to partner with clear cutting these forests.”

“We’ll keep doing forest health and fuels reduction and restoration work as much as they’ll let us because that makes us safer for wildfire and healthier for us,” he said. “A lot of this is really going to be up to the federal courts, likely, or just whether or not they do it. Will they have the staff? Will they be organized? Will they actually go out and do the work?”

As previously reported by The News Tribune, federal funding freezes and layoffs have sowed confusion and chaos for wildfire planning efforts in Washington at a time when the state is seeing more severe and destructive fires. Tens of millions of dollars in grants the DNR had expected to receive were frozen in March with no communication from the federal government, hampering efforts at the local level to address forest health, wildfire preparation, wildfire resiliency and urban and community forestry, DNR communications manager Michael Kelly told The News Tribune last month.

Forest-product industry celebrates Trump’s order

Nick Smith is the public affairs director for the American Forest Resource Council, a regional trade association of lumber and forest-product manufacturers, producers, forestland owners and law firms, consultants and insurance agencies that represent the forest-products industry. AFRC operates in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Montana and Nevada.

Smith said AFRC members support active forest management on federal lands, sustainable timber harvesting and forest-management tools like logging to reduce the risk of wildfire, insects and disease. AFRC also advocates for long-term timber production on DNR state trust lands.

Each national forest is unique and operates under its own established forest plans, like the Northwest Forest Plan, which covers 24.5 million acres of federally-managed lands in Washington, western Oregon and northwestern California. The Northwest Forest Plan manages social and economic sustainability while balancing protection of threatened and endangered species with a “scientifically credible, socially responsible and legally sound” approach, according to its website.

Smith said a third of national forest land is available for timber harvest and half of 1% of those trees are harvested in a given year. Each 1 million board feet of wood harvested directly supports about 15 jobs in Washington, including loggers, sawmill workers, truck drivers and manufacturers, which in turn generates revenue for public schools and the local economy, he said.

“We think it raises a really important question to the public: Where should our wood come from? The United States is the largest importer of wood on the planet. We use more wood than anybody else on the planet,” Smith said. “Where should our wood come from? Should it come from here in the Pacific Northwest, where we have the strongest environmental laws and regulations on the planet, where we use the best science, where we have the most advanced forest practices in the world? Should we grow and make these wood products here at home, or should we continue to import wood from places like Brazil, Southeast Asia, Russia?”

The rate of timber harvested from national forests in the past decade has remained relatively consistent, between 2 and 3 billion board feet, according to the USDA. Smith argues a 25% increase in the logging rate on federal lands isn’t extreme because loggers are already logging at a rate under what is acceptable under the Northwest Forest Plan.

Although he acknowledged the Forest Service is facing challenges with staffing right now, he said DNR has shown to be an effective partner, “increasing the capacity of the Forest Service to do more management” through the Good Neighbor Authority program.

‘Not something that can be undone’

Dave Werntz is a science and conservation director for Conservation Northwest, a nonprofit conservation group that advocates for protection of wildlands, habitat and wildlife restoration in the Northwest region on both state and federal lands.

Werntz said forests are important for a number of reasons, not only supporting a wide range of biodiversity, but also providing sources of clean air and water, subsistence hunting, recreation, exercise and solace. Although national forests are managed for multiple uses, including timber production, Werntz said the way the Trump administration is proposing to ramp up logging “present(s) a real threat to our public forests.”

“What we have found is that (forest restoration) work that is most productive and gets the best outcomes on the ground – which are increased resilience to natural disturbance, better wildlife habitat and fish habitat – that requires a deliberate and intentional scientific approach,” he said. “And that’s exactly the opposite of what the Trump administration’s executive order does. Instead of thinking carefully and acting smartly, it just proposes kind of a haphazard approach, declaring huge areas as being under an emergency. And if everything’s an emergency, it’s very difficult to prioritize what actions you take and what steps are the most important to take.”

Werntz also questioned the wood industry’s ability to keep up with increased supply, noting that some mills in Montana have closed not due to lack of supply but because of the lack of affordable housing and the rising cost of living in rural areas, which has made it more difficult to attract and retain workers.

“The stuff that is ailing our rural community economies is not going to be fixed by this,” he said. “Taking kind of a random chaotic approach is not the way that’s going to build up rural economies across the West. I’m concerned this is really going to be a setback, not just for our forests, but for the communities around the forests that rely on these forests.”

Lia Brewster is a Northwest conservation campaign strategist for the Sierra Club, a 130-year-old environmental nonprofit that advocates for strong environmental laws and other environmental issues. Brewster said logging forests for wildfire prevention looks very different from logging for profit, and she is concerned the Trump administration’s plans would actually worsen the risk for wildfires in Washington.

“A forest that’s improperly cut and removes the large trees is actually prone to stronger wildfires and more intense wildfires, whereas a forest that’s undergone actual restoration is way more resilient,” she said. “If you’re looking for timber process(ing), you’re cutting the oldest, biggest trees and those trees have the thickest bark and are the most fire-resistant. Whereas if you’re actually hoping to reduce wildfire intensity, you’re removing much of the smaller materials from in between and leaving those older trees. That’s much less profitable from a timber perspective.”

Ramping up timber production would also likely require additional infrastructure and capacity of mills, which are large and long-term investments that are risky given “these current administration orders (are) not guaranteed to be a long term, sustained increase,” Brewster said.

“I used to work for the Park Service and for the Forest Service Wildland Fire on the side, so I feel pretty strongly about the fact that they’re … doing these actions that require so much careful analysis and work to make these plans while reducing staff of scientists who could do that,” she said. “(It) feels very disingenuous and also like it could have unintended negative consequences, for sure … It could mean projects done with less oversight as they’re contracted out. And all those things can harm ecosystems in ways that take truly decades and decades to repair. It’s not something that can be undone once it’s done.”

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