Logging isn’t all bad, but Trump’s order to boost timber harvest is troubling | Opinion
Logging is not necessarily a dirty word in the environmental dictionary. There, I said it.
Provided sustainable practices are used, namely the careful choice over what trees get chopped down, logging can have a positive impact on the health of our forests as part of an effective management strategy that includes mechanical thinning and prescribed burning.
Selective logging can also mitigate the risk and destructive power of wildfires, as shown in theory by a 2023 study co-authored by fire scientists at UC Berkeley and in real life. Like during the 2020 Creek Fire, when 20,000 acres of mixed-conifer forest around Shaver Lake owned by electricity provider Southern California Edison that had been actively managed since the 1980s proved significantly more resilient than adjacent national forest lands filled with dead trees and overgrown brush.
This is my way of saying logging shouldn’t automatically be perceived as an environmental threat – despite what history tells us is the result when chainsaws and bulldozers are employed by the wrong hands.
Which brings us to the Trump administration’s recent edict to boost timber production by 25% across roughly 112 million acres of our nation’s forests, even if that means bypassing federal protections for endangered species and other environmental laws.
The emergency order issued by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins intended to justify the move did not include any forest names or specific timber harvest targets. But based on the low-res map included in Rollins’ announcement, all 18 national forests in California will be impacted in some fashion. (Federally designated wilderness areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service appear to be excluded.)
In her notice, Rollins argued these actions will “better provide domestic timber supplies, create jobs and prosperity, reduce wildfire disasters, improve fish and wildlife habitats, and decrease costs of construction and energy.”
“Healthy forests require work,” Rollins said. “We’re facing a full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.”
Order burdens weakened Forest Service
Environmental groups reacted with outrage to Trump’s order, calling it a thinly veiled attempt to bypass environmental laws in order to justify widespread commercial logging under the false pretense that such actions will reduce wildfire risk.
“Another day, another massive giveaway to industry at the expense of our planet,” said Garett Rose, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The administration is recklessly cutting thousands of federal jobs and directing an understaffed, under-resourced agency to supercharge destructive logging.”
That last part cuts to the heart of the matter. Two months ago, the Trump administration laid off 3,400 full-time US Forest Service employees or roughly 10% of its entire workforce, including staff that oversee and supervise the felling of trees into logs.
Now, an agency that is already stretched to its breaking point gets weighed down with the extra burden of ramping up timber production over the next five years. Not exactly a blueprint for success – unless success is measured by how much profit can be harvested off our public lands.
Once again, logging can be a beneficial practice. By carefully selecting which trees to chop down – which oftentimes means making a deliberate decision to leave standing the largest and tallest specimens in any given area – it is possible to produce lumber in ways that also help forests regenerate and thrive.
But of course the largest and tallest trees also yield the most board feet of wood, making them highly desirable to commercial loggers. And the decision to spare those trees and other old-growth areas from the chainsaw requires regulation and enforcement, two things Trump abhors.
Given his administration’s track record of handling sensitive and complex issues with the precision of a splatter painting, I’m distrustful that anything good will grow out of cutting down more trees in our forests.
