Saw, Baby, Saw? Trump's Emergency Threat to our Forests
It’s a classic Trumpian policy statement: Cut more trees. Think less. And remember that this is an emergency! That’s the essence of Trump administration misguided plans for our federal forests.
Two Trump executive orders to increase logging in national forests and
a memo from Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who oversees the United
States Forest Service (USFS), make it pretty clear. The administration wants more
logging, amounting to 25 percent more on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. It wants less thinking — or at least more streamlined thinking — about environmental consequences or conflicts with other legally-mandated uses of the land.
The relevant agency heads have been ordered to come up with plans to increase
logging and decrease legal delays. Most of the directions contain the caveat that the
measures developed to carry out the orders shall be “consistent with applicable laws.”
But the orders also contemplate, and the administration has now proposed, changes in
some of those laws.
And, although most Americans have somehow missed it, the administration claims
we face a timber emergency, namely a timber-import emergency. In fact, one of the orders is entitled, “Addressing the Threat to National Security from Imports of Timber, Lumber.”
https://www.postalley.org/2025/05/29/saw-baby-saw-trumps-emergency-threat-to-our-forests/
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