PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – The Trump administration is taking steps to boost logging in national forests across the United States, raising some concerns for organizations in Oregon.

On March 1, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, along with the Forest Service, to issue new guidance on increasing timber production and wildfire resiliency in national forests.

Following the order, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins issued a memo on April 3, designating an “emergency situation” on national forest lands — opening logging on nearly 60% of Forest Service land, or 176,000 square miles across the United States.

“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 prevented full utilization of these resources and made us reliant on foreign
producers,” Rollins wrote in the memo.

“It is vital that we reverse these policies and increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security. We can manage our forests to better provide domestic timber supply, create jobs and prosperity, reduce wildfire disasters, improve fish and wildlife habitats, and decrease costs of construction and energy,” the USDA secretary continued.

That same day, Christopher French, the acting associate chief of the Forest Service, ordered regional foresters to develop five-year plans to increase timber production.

As those plans are developed, some local organizations are sounding the alarm, including Oregon Wild — a group that advocates to restore wildlands, wildlife and waters in Oregon.

According to Oregon Wild Conservation Director Steve Pedery, Secretary Rollins’ memo is an “attempt to exploit fear and override environmental safeguards” to benefit the logging industry.”

“This memo isn’t about protecting forests. It is about logging and looting 60% of America’s National Forest Lands, 112,646,000 acres, by declaring a fake emergency to justify weakening protections for our clean water, wildlife, and wildlands. When the Secretary of Agriculture says the primary goal is to ‘protect timber resources,’ it pulls the mask off this manufactured emergency,” Pedery said.

According to Oregon Wild, the order would “gut” the ability of the public to ensure their clean drinking water and local forests are protected from “poor logging practices.

Oregon Wild also raised concerns over a map released by the USDA secretary, showing lands covered under the emergency declaration. Oregon Wild described the map as “vague and misleading,” stating the map includes areas that are off-limits to commercial logging and includes temperate rainforest areas where “claims of high fire risk or other justifications are dubious at best.”

“The science is clear, and so is the motive behind this memo. Anyone who cares about clean water, wildlife, and public lands should join us in opposing this reckless scheme to loot our National Forests,” OW said.

Meanwhile, the executive order was lauded by groups including the American Forest Resource Council, a trade organization advocating for sustained timber harvests on public land for forest health in the west.

“These are common sense directives Americans support and want from their federal government, which owns about 30 percent of our nation’s forests. Our federal forests have been mismanaged for decades. Americans have paid the price in almost every way. Lost jobs, lost manufacturing, and infrastructure. Lost recreational opportunities like hunting and fishing, and access to our lands. Degraded wildlife populations, water, and air. Landscapes and communities devastated by wildfire. Our federal forests are facing an emergency. It’s time to start treating it like one by taking immediate action,” AFRC President Travis Joseph said in a press release.

According to AFRC, one-half of one percent of national forest land is harvested for timber every year and estimates that nearly 80 million acres of national forest land need restoration to reduce susceptibility to wildfire, disease and insect infestations.

As the Forest Service develops its forest management plans, there’s uncertainty around how this will impact national forests in Oregon, according to Michael Coughlan — associate research professor at the University of Oregon, and co-director of the school’s Ecosystem Workforce Program.

“For example, how much land is actually going to be available potentially for timber sales. (The USDA memo is) not directing 60% of the forest necessarily, but it’s sort of a complex thing and how it would be implemented,” Coughlan told KOIN 6 News.

Coughlan noted that the orders come as the Forest Service faces a major workforce reduction.

“There are huge questions of how this would be implemented within the Forest Service itself. And then there are different factors, like, not all forests are the same, right? And so, the commercial value of timber is a factor, how much the cost of actually removing that timber is a factor, and those things also relate to where are the priorities in terms of wildfire risk reduction?” Coughlan explained.

Coughlan agrees that logging can be used as a wildfire resiliency tool, noting there should be balance.

“A lot of our national forest lands are in need of active management, which could involve a role for the timber industry in terms of commercial harvesting, if applied correctly,” Coughlan said. “Commercial timber harvesting is a tool among many that can be used to help restore resilience on national forest lands.”

However, Coughlan added, “Unfortunately, it’s not always commercially viable from the timber industry perspective, in terms of the marketability of the actual timber coming of those areas where we need to thin overstocked areas that are potentially vulnerable to wildfire.”

“In the past, when old-growth forests were logged, that decreased the resilience of forests to disturbances, which are natural parts of our ecology. We have endangered species perhaps because of logging, habitat removal, we have decreasing water quality and those kinds of issues that arise from the sort of conventional clear-cut timber operations,” Coughlan said.

When it comes to balancing timber production, wildfire resiliency, and maintaining ecosystems, Coughlan said “there are a couple things involved.”

“One is, we have to actually rely on expertise of science to try to help define those boundaries, right? We have to trust, and we have to invest in the expertise to try to figure those questions out, so we aren’t doing things we later regret. That said, nothing’s perfect. So, precautionary principles are always good to have. At the same time, we have threats of climate change, every wildfire season is getting worse it seems for Oregon. So, there’s a lot of urgency to act,” Coughlan said.

“It’s a hard question to answer without having all of the voices at the table to try to collectively solve our problems. And frankly, I don’t think the Trump administration is interested in the opinions of others, and so I don’t think they’ll probably be successful in solving that problem for us.”

KOIN 6 News reached out to Region 6 of the U.S. Forest Service, which covers the Pacific Northwest, about its forest management plans.

In response, a spokesperson for the Forest Service stated, “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.”

The spokesperson continued, “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.”