03-07-2025, 04:21 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...tive-order
The president, in an executive order, has demanded an expansion in tree cutting across 280m acres (113m hectares) of national forests and other public lands, claiming that “heavy-handed federal policies” have made America reliant on foreign imports of timber.
“It is vital that we reverse these policies and increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security,” the order adds.
Trump has instructed the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to increase logging targets and for officials to circumvent the US’s Endangered Species Act by using unspecified emergency powers to ignore protections placed upon vulnerable creatures’ habitats...
Experts have said this overriding of the Endangered Species Act is probably illegal.
The order also stipulates logging projects can be sped up if they are for purported wildfire risk reduction, via “thinning” of vegetation that could ignite. Some scientists have said that aggressively felling forests, particularly established, fire-resistant trees, actually increases the risk of fast-moving fires...
“This Trump executive order is the most blatant attempt in American history by a president to hand over federal public lands to the logging industry,” said Chad Hanson, wildfire scientist at the John Muir Project.
“What’s worse, the executive order is built on a lie, as Trump falsely claims that more logging will curb wildfires and protect communities, while the overwhelming weight of evidence shows exactly the opposite.”
Hanson said logging alters the microclimate of forests, creating hotter and drier conditions that helps wildfires, such as the events that recently ravaged Los Angeles, to spread faster.
“Trump’s exact approach, logging in remote forests and telling communities that it will stop fires, is responsible for numerous towns being destroyed by fires in recent years, and hundreds of lives lost,” he said.
Environmental groups decried Trump’s latest attempt to circumvent endangered species laws that shield about 400 species in national forests, including grizzly bears, spotted owls and wild salmon, and warned an increase in logging could pollute the water supply relied upon by millions of Americans.
The president, in an executive order, has demanded an expansion in tree cutting across 280m acres (113m hectares) of national forests and other public lands, claiming that “heavy-handed federal policies” have made America reliant on foreign imports of timber.
“It is vital that we reverse these policies and increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security,” the order adds.
Trump has instructed the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to increase logging targets and for officials to circumvent the US’s Endangered Species Act by using unspecified emergency powers to ignore protections placed upon vulnerable creatures’ habitats...
Experts have said this overriding of the Endangered Species Act is probably illegal.
The order also stipulates logging projects can be sped up if they are for purported wildfire risk reduction, via “thinning” of vegetation that could ignite. Some scientists have said that aggressively felling forests, particularly established, fire-resistant trees, actually increases the risk of fast-moving fires...
“This Trump executive order is the most blatant attempt in American history by a president to hand over federal public lands to the logging industry,” said Chad Hanson, wildfire scientist at the John Muir Project.
“What’s worse, the executive order is built on a lie, as Trump falsely claims that more logging will curb wildfires and protect communities, while the overwhelming weight of evidence shows exactly the opposite.”
Hanson said logging alters the microclimate of forests, creating hotter and drier conditions that helps wildfires, such as the events that recently ravaged Los Angeles, to spread faster.
“Trump’s exact approach, logging in remote forests and telling communities that it will stop fires, is responsible for numerous towns being destroyed by fires in recent years, and hundreds of lives lost,” he said.
Environmental groups decried Trump’s latest attempt to circumvent endangered species laws that shield about 400 species in national forests, including grizzly bears, spotted owls and wild salmon, and warned an increase in logging could pollute the water supply relied upon by millions of Americans.
