Region Archives: US West

OREGON – Matt Donegan is working on a plan for Oregon’s forest problem. In 2024, the state saw 1.9 million acres burn. And last year, the agency was beset by scandal, management turmoil, and near-bankruptcy from the cost of putting out blazes. During the current legislative session, a lot of people—lawmakers, Gov. Tina Kotek, the state’s timber industry, environmentalists, electric utilities, and hundreds of thousands of beleaguered property owners—are all looking for a solution. …Donegan knows he’s walking a knife edge between conservation groups that zealously guard Oregon’s forests and a timber industry eager to increase cutting. …The problem is, the forests are so overstocked with dead, dry debris after a century of fire suppression that fires easily become catastrophic rather than restorative. …Donegan proposes to break off a small fraction of that amount for intensive management—thinning and prescribed burns—as a pilot project.

…a relatively wet 2023 for much of the state bolstered many trees against the spread of the mountain pine beetle, the separate spruce beetle and the spruce budworm. But a dry 2024 set the pests marching again by sapping forests of the water they need to stay healthy and fight off infestations, said Dan West, entomologist with Colorado State Forest Service. Colorado’s higher-altitude forests need several normal to wet seasons in a row to build up true resiliency, he said. One dry season meant Western spruce budworm affected 217,000 acres of state forests in 2024, up from 202,000 acres in 2023… Mountain pine beetle… grew to 5,600 acres of impact. The Douglas-fir beetle impacted 21,000 acres in 2024, its largest total damage in almost 10 years… Western balsam bark beetle …is still the … most widespread by acreage. The acres affected by the balsam bark beetle held steady at 27,000, but more of those trees die. 

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. …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. …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.

A Washington State University professor is one of a dozen researchers who signed an open letter noting that a proposed expansion of logging on federal lands may have some benefits — but that the firing of forestry experts and cuts in research could undermine that potential. The result, they say in the letter published Thursday at the website of the journal Science, could harm wildlife, increase wildfire risk and eliminate irreplaceable carbon stores in national forests. Austin Himes, an assistant professor in WSU’s School of the Environment, said that the idea of increasing domestic timber production and relying less on imports has promise. But focusing solely on speeding up the pace of logging risks other priorities that “evidence-based” forestry practices seek to balance. …the researchers said increased logging, if focused only on efficiently increasing timber production, could reduce the ability of forests to withstand growing threats from pests and wildfires.

Imagine you’re a college senior who just landed your dream job working for the U.S. Forest Service  — a career … fueled by a passion for the natural world and protecting our federal land. Then you receive an email terminating you. …A federal initiative to shrink the workforce affected the whole nation and directly impacted students on Utah State University’s campus. “Just seeing all these jobs go away and science being defunded — I guess I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life at the moment,” said Anna Hansen, sophomore in USU’s forest ecology and management program. …The Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State has several different majors. In years past, there were more forestry jobs than USU students to fill them… With the changes and terminations, the outlook for this year’s graduates could be very different and affect those still in college who are considering pursuing this career.

HULETT—Jim Neiman says that the best-case scenario for his family’s timber mill at the base of the Bear Lodge Mountains is that it doesn’t shutter. The Crook County sawmill in 2022 shrunk to one shift to survive hard economic times and a dearth of available timber. Three years later, there are what appear to be major industry tailwinds: a pro-logging presidential order, prospective tariff hikes on Canadian timber and now a U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary’s order declaring an “emergency” to stimulate logging on 112.6 million acres of national forest. The order covers nearly 60% of all national forest lands. Collectively, it stands to help, Neiman said. The timber sale approval process, which is run through the National Environmental Policy Act, is likely to go much faster. “The old process with NEPA could sometimes take a year and a half to five years,” he said. “This will speed that up to a few months.”

The federal government is readying to fire up more chain saws in the Northwest’s national forests. President Donald Trump’s executive order last month laid the groundwork for wholesale changes in national forest management. But just when and where more cutting could happen is up in the air. National forests are among the Northwest’s recreational jewels — the public lands that are available for camping and hiking offer more flexibility than national parks for bringing a dog, a horse, and motorized and mountain bike recreation on some shared-use trails. These forests also are logged for timber — and the administration wants to up the cut. Here at home, that means timber managers are under a directive to help contribute to a 25% increase in logging volume over the next several years.

SACRAMENTO – Protecting communities ahead of peak fire season, Governor Gavin Newsom today took action to fast-track critical projects to ensure wildfire resiliency statewide. Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 100 (Gabriel), which allocates over $170 million in accelerated funding to conservancies for forest and vegetation management across California. The bill also allocates $10 million to support wildfire response and resiliency. …In addition, Governor Newsom signed an executive order to ensure that the wildfire safety projects funded under Assembly Bill 100 benefit from streamlining under a previous emergency proclamation issued in March. 

A federal order to increase US timber production by 25% will touch all 18 of the Golden’s State’s national forests, officials said. The USDA said it does not yet have information about how many acres in each forest will be affected. California’s national forests are on the chopping block — literally — in the wake of the Trump administration’s April 5 order to immediately expand timber production. Last week, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins issued an emergency declaration that ordered the US Forest Service to open up some 112.5 million acres of national forestland to logging. The announcement included a grainy map of affected forests, which did not specify forest names or the amount of impacted acreage in each. However, USDA officials have confirmed that the order will touch all 18 of the Golden State’s national forests, which collectively span more than 20 million acres. [to access the full story a Los Angeles Times subscription is required]

BONNERS FERRY, ID – A federal district court has stopped a logging project in northern Idaho that would have carved more roads into the area and harmed the Selkirk grizzly population habitat. Only about 50 grizzlies live in the region. Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which has been in litigation with the U.S. Forest Service over this issue for nearly six years, said the project would have resulted in more roads than is allowed under the agency’s rules. “The Forest Plan, which is their management plan that governs the forest, limits road density in Selkirk grizzly bear habitat,” he said, “because most grizzly bears are killed within a third of a mile of a road, and it’s usually a logging road.” The court decision found the government had been violating road construction limits for years. Court documents show the goal of the Hanna Flats Good Neighbor Authority Project was to reduce wildfire risk.

CALIFORNIA — State experts said they’re dubious about President Donald Trump’s claims that his directive opening up well over half of the country’s forests to logging will reduce wildfire risk and “save American lives.” Some, such as University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources climate-change scientist Daniel Swain, flatly called the administration’s rhetoric disingenuous and misleading. “It’s BS, frankly,” Swain told The Examiner. “Are we going to try and justify logging forests commercially under the guise of wildfire-risk reduction? …The Trump administration says the benefits of these actions are largely twofold: It will reinvigorate the economy by boosting a stagnant timber industry and significantly mitigate wildfires tearing through the West. …UC Berkeley wildfire researcher Scott Stephens said that logging can be a viable way to mitigate fire risk, as long as it’s done sustainably and arborists are strategic about what trees they’re chopping down.

Amid a growing number of wildfires, mostly across Western states, a U.S. Senate bill is aiming to protect areas where communities are most vulnerable to fires, using “good neighbor” agreements, cross-boundary collaboration and the expansion of tools to prevent fire hazards. The bill, titled the Fix Our Forests Act, was introduced Thursday by Sens. John Curtis, R-Utah, John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., Tim Sheehy R-Mont., and Alex Padilla D-Calif. to “combat catastrophic wildfires, restore forest ecosystems, and make federal forest management more efficient and responsive,” according to a news release. …The U.S. House version of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., passed the House in January. The legislation designates the top 20% of the landscape areas where wildfires are likely to spread and impact communities, including tribal areas, as so-called Fireshed Management Areas. The areas would be selected based on factors including risks to communities and to municipal watersheds.

Los Angeles Times by Faith Pinho: California Sen. Padilla hopes Fix Our Forests Act will prevent more L.A. fires

A Salmon, Idaho man has pleaded guilty to a seven-count indictment for his role in schemes to rig bids, allocate territories, and commit wire fraud over an eight-year period while providing fuel truck services to the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire fighters. Kris Bird, 62, pleaded guilty at the end of March to all counts two weeks before trial, with no assurances from the government as to what sentence will be recommended when he goes before a judge with another involved executive in June 2025. The men were indicted after a federal wiretap investigation in December 2023… “The defendant illegally profited from American taxpayer money,” said Special Agent in Charge Mehtab Syed of the FBI Salt Lake City Field Office. “The FBI and our partners are committed to rooting out fraud and protecting fair competition in the bidding for government contracts.”

A contentious Oregon wildfire map that imposed new regulations on high-risk landowners may be swapped for incentives meant to promote home hardening and defensible space. The Senate Natural Resources Committee has unanimously voted to scrap the state’s wildfire hazard map, originally approved in 2021, as well as the enhanced building code standards and other requirements it entailed. Repealing the wildfire map involved a “difficult conversation” but it’s proven necessary, not only because the provisions were deeply unpopular but because they were impractical, said Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, the committee’s chair. Senate Bill 83, which is now headed for a vote on the Senate floor, would eliminate the map and instead allow local governments to adopt model building codes intended to increase fire resilience.

Related content:

• Austin American-Statesman: Austin’s proposed wildfire risk map unlikely to hike property insurance rates

Environmental groups are sounding the alarm after the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared more than 100 million acres of national forest land “an emergency situation” that can only be helped with chain saws, wood chippers and the bigger, more destructive tools of industrial logging.  But an attorney specializing in environmental litigation and a longtime forester and policy analyst both say contrary to how bad the memo from USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins may sound, its contents could be a shot in the arm the U.S. needs to ramp up its response to the growing wildfire crisis and continue much-needed work on forest health and restoration where mill infrastructure exists… Trump’s executive order says the U.S.’ inability to “fully exploit” its timber supply has, among other things, contributed to wildfire disasters.

Related content:

• FOX 13 Seattle – Washington conservationists criticize Trump’s national forest logging plan

Gary Earney

The USDA’s order for the U.S. Forest Service to increase lumber production by 25% is being panned as both unwise and infeasible in Southern California’s sprawling national forests due to a lack of quality wood and nearby sawmills. But those four forests were heavily logged from World War I through the Korean War for soldier barracks and equipment needs, and then to support rapidly growing post-war housing markets, said Gary Earney, who managed timber sales and other multiple use permits for the San Bernardino National Forest from 1978 through 2007, and was a consultant to the forest through 2014. …A public lands advocate said via her action, Rollins is decreeing the agency only needs to propose one action for a given logging project, not the typically legally required range offering less and more environmentally harmful options, and also eliminates the public objection process.

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The latest findings about the health of Colorado’s forests are a “mixed bag”, according to forestry experts. On Tuesday, the Colorado State Forest Service released its annual report tracking the damage from forest pests. “Insects are so closely tied to a lot of that temperature and precipitation so in Colorado it’s really been a number of years, actually 31 years, since we’ve been below average temperatures so that makes it really hard to be a tree in Colorado,” CSFS forest entomologist Dr. Dan West said. …According to the report, the front range is experiencing a surge in activity from the mountain pine beetle. In 2021, the insect impacted 1,500 acres statewide. In 2024, that number grew to 5,600 affected acres and included areas in Jefferson County and Castle Rock. …Not only do the dead trees cause forests to be less visually attractive, but they also create more fuel for more damaging wildfires.

An Oregon bill that would eliminate a controversial wildfire hazard map moved one step closer to reality on Tuesday after unanimously passing the Senate Committee on Natural Resources. Senate Bill 83 would repeal a map meant to identify parts of Oregon at high risk of catastrophic wildfires but has become a lightning rod for anger from rural residents who say it places an unfair burden on them. The bill moves to the Senate floor for a vote by the chamber. It would need to pass the House and be signed by the governor before becoming law. Most lawmakers say it’s likely to pass all of those hurdles. …The map was roundly condemned by impacted residents who said it was inaccurate, decreased property values and imposed burdensome regulations. Republicans who made killing the map a priority this session celebrated the progress.

Bettina von Hagen

PORT ANGELES — EFM, a forest investment and management firm based in Portland, Ore., has purchased 68,000 acres on the North Olympic Peninsula with plans of managing the forests through climate-smart practices. These coastal temperate rainforest acres were purchased for more than $200 million under the newly established entity Olympic Rainforest LLC, according to a press release. …The land was purchased from Rayonier, Inc, a timberland real estate investment trust which had owned the land for more than 80 years and used it for timber production, according to EFM CEO Bettina von Hagen. With its management strategy, EFM will prioritize sustainable forest management, landscape conservation, enhanced biodiversity, cultural significance and public recreation. …In addition to the management techniques, part of the company’s FSC-certified approach includes using diverse revenue streams from forests such as carbon credits and conservation easements, as well as traditional forest products, according to a press release.

ROSEBURG, Ore. — Timber organizations are calling for action on the Northwest Forest Plan after President Donald Trump issued an executive order for the immediate expansion of American lumber production. This comes as the U.S. Forest Service considers an amendment to the plan that aims to address fire resilience, economic opportunities, and updated guidance on conserving old growth, with a public comment period that ended in March. Following the executive order from the president, Douglas Timber Operators, a local forest products organization, issued a letter to the U.S. Forest Service calling for a full revision of the Northwest Forest Plan that was initially written in 1994. …According to the U.S. Forest Service, the forest plan covers 24.5 million acres of federally-managed lands found in western Oregon, Washington, and northwestern California. According to DTO’s letter, the plan provided an annual allowable sale quantity of 78 million board feet that has never been met on the Umpqua National Forest…

An insect known for turning entire mountainsides the color of rust could be making a resurgence in Colorado.  The pest is none other than the mountain pine beetle. After a roughly decade-long period of relatively lower populations, the bugs are rebuilding their numbers along the Front Range and in southwest Colorado, according to an annual forest health report published by the Colorado State Forest Service in late March. “I’m a little concerned moving in this summer because we really haven’t had any precipitation,” said Dan West, the forest entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service. “I’m worried bark beetles are going to increase their populations in these drought-stricken trees.” Few bugs have had a more visible impact on forests across the western U.S.

The U.S. Forest Service has imposed the maximum penalty of $16,000 on the logging company it holds responsible for starting last autumn’s Yellow Lake Fire. The penalty comes after a three-month-long investigation conducted by fire investigators with the U.S. Forest Service. At about 11 a.m. on Sept. 28, 2024, the only person on shift at the Duchesne Ridge Fuelwood Sale Site in the Uinta Mountains left for the day. Just over four hours later, dispatch received the first report of smoke in the area. According to the report, the fire was most likely started by friction from the logging company’s equipment. Despite having officials on the scene early, the fire grew to 150 acres overnight. The fire eventually became Utah’s largest wildfire in 2024, growing to over 33,000 acres.

Firefighters in central California were working Tuesday to contain a wildfire near the Nevada border threatening a forest home to the oldest trees in the world, after making good progress on Monday, officials said. The Silver Fire broke out Sunday near Bishop, California, in Inyo County and has burned ‎1,589 acres. It was 50% contained as of Tuesday morning. “The fire still threatens structures, critical infrastructure, watersheds, endangered species, and cultural resources,” the Cal Fire San Bernardino Unit said in a post to social media on Tuesday. Less than 15 miles from the fire, the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest contains trees that are more than 4,000 years old. The Patriarch Tree is the world’s largest bristlecone pine tree.