Region Archives: US West

The Alaska Division of Forestry & Fire Protection (DOF) is working with the Anchorage Fire Department (AFD) Wildfire Division to implement a shaded “fuel break” in the Anchorage Hillside area extending from Hilltop Ski Area Road to Prospect Drive. Known as the East-West Connector, this project was scheduled to begin May 5 and represents a renewed effort to reduce wildfire risk through coordinated mitigation work across the Municipality of Anchorage. Wildfire Division Chief, Anchorage Fire Department, Jon Glover shared this statement: “The collaboration between the State of Alaska Division of Forestry & Fire Protection and the Anchorage Fire Department on the East-West Connector shaded fuel break represents exactly the kind of partnership our community needs. This project is more than a line on a map, it’s a commitment to proactive wildfire mitigation and public safety. Together, we’re building resilience and delivering long-term value to the residents we serve.”

Taking aim at “climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life,” President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 federal budget would reduce spending on public lands, shift some national park facilities and forest management to states, and consolidate federal wildland firefighting into a new service inside the Department of the Interior… If Congress approves the proposed budget, the cuts would go into effect on October 1, 2025, when the federal fiscal 2026 budget year begins… Trump’s budget recommends $4.7 billion in cuts department-wide, including $1.4 billion from Forest Service activities and research… “The President has pledged to manage national forests for their intended purpose of producing timber,” the letter states, but it reduces Forest Service salaries by $342 million, eliminates the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program’s $50 million allocation, and reduces “funding for recreation, vegetation and watershed management, and land management regulation.” It also recommends “transferring smaller, lesser visited parks to State and tribal governments.”

Environmentalists and tribal members who have defended the Tongass National Forest for decades are unsure how to proceed under the second Trump administration. Meanwhile, some people struggling in timber and mining feel renewed hope. Both sides say only time will tell as they watch federal actions fall. …Conservationists say public opinion overwhelmingly supports protecting the Tongass, based on comments collected by the Forest Service. Some Alaska policymakers and industry representatives argue that national polls and public comments are detached from the economic and existential reality of people living in Southeast. …Gordon Chew, owner of Tenakee Logging Co., said logging did not change the last time the Roadless Rule was rescinded. He finds it unlikely to be different now because he said no industry exists. The Forest Service no longer builds roads for timber operators.

A national strategy to increase timber production and use emergency authorities to protect forests from fire, insects and disease should be in place by May 3, according to an order by Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Chris French. At the same time, the agency is consolidating its nine regional offices into two or three centers. Simultaneously, its parent USDA could lose as many as 30,000 of its 100,000 employees. Approximately 12,000 of those are expected to leave in the second wave of buyout offers in late April. The remaining 18,000 USDA employees are expected to be fired, the firm said. How that might play out in Greater Yellowstone regions like the Bridger Teton or Custer Gallatin national forests is not clear. …With a looming fire and tourist season about to spin up activity in the woods, the Forest Service’s ability to handle baseline missions while reinventing itself has other longtime forest observers worried.

A big change could be coming to U.S. wildlife conservation policy. In mid-April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a proposal to change how the term “harm” would be defined in the Endangered Species Act. …According to Paula Swedeen, policy director at Conservation Northwest, the goal of the change is to bring the definition of “harm” in the ESA closer to what the Trump administration believes is its originally-intended meaning. …Washington state has its own conservation plans that are already in place on state lands. According to Swedeen, there’s reason to think that the changes to the ESA won’t impact those too much. …According to Swedeen, the spotted owl is one of the best examples of how endangered species could be put at risk by the proposed new ESA reading. …changes could also impact other endangered species in Washington, like the grizzly bear

Oregon forestry officials now have a general idea of how they’ll find a new state forester — more than four months after Cal Mukumoto’s sudden resignation from the job. …It could take another two to four months to fill the role, state human resources staff told the Board of Forestry on Wednesday. …In February, Gov. Tina Kotek introduced a bill that would give her the power to choose Mukumoto’s replacement. Mukumoto resigned in January after months of turmoil over workplace conduct investigations, questionable spending and a massive, albeit temporary, financial deficit resulting from the state’s most expensive fire season on record. The ongoing leadership shakeup comes at a pivotal time for the forestry department, as the Legislature considers bills that could change how the state covers wildfire costs and reshape wildfire hazard mapping. The state also faces President Trump’s federal staffing cuts could lead to lackluster firefighting response.

During the Vietnam War, an American officer referred to the U.S. military’s decision to bomb a town of 35,000 people, saying, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” This quote comes to mind when examining a bill sponsored by Utah Sen. John Curtis, ironically named “Fix Our Forests Act,” S.1462, (FOFA). It should be renamed “We Have to Destroy our Forests to Save Them Act”. The bill is forest malpractice, climate malpractice, and public health malpractice. Sen. Curtis’s S. 1462 is a legislative enactment of Trump’s recent executive order to dramatically ramp up logging on federal lands, exempting 60% of national forest lands from meaningful environmental analysis and public participation under the pretense of a wildfire “emergency.” Remember Donald Trump is the environmental expert that insists the climate crisis is a hoax, and attributed Western forest fires to insufficient raking of the forest floors.

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.”