Jody Toor
Centralia, Washington — Rural communities across the Pacific Northwest are facing increasing economic uncertainty as mill closures, trade disputes and restrictive forest management policies threaten family-wage jobs, a news release from state Rep. Peter Abbarno, R-Chehalis, stated. To address these shared challenges and strengthen cross-border collaboration, Abbarno met with his counterpart from the British Columbia Legislative Assembly, Official Opposition Caucus Chair Jody Toor, at the state Capitol in Olympia. Toor met with Abbarno to discuss the relationship between Washington state and British Columbia, particularly the challenges facing the timber industry. With both regions facing fiber shortages, a severe shortage of raw logs and wood chips needed to operate mills, and fluctuating market conditions, the two legislative leaders agreed that open communication is essential to navigating the issues affecting the regional economy, according to the release.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Layoffs are expected at the beginning of April for Roseburg Forest Products Co.’s Riddle Plywood facility, according to a WARN notice filed this week. The notice, filed Feb. 4, says the company expects to permanently lay off 146 team members at the Riddle By-Pass Road location, though the facility will remain open. These layoffs are expected to take place after a 60-day WARN period. The company said April 5 “will be the last day of work for a majority of the affected team members before the layoff and that the remaining affected team members, if any, will be within 14 days of that date.” Impacted positions span a number of job titles, though the majority consist of Layup WAT Operators, Finish End WAT Operators, and Common Laborers.
Building homes inside a factory has long been seen as a way to revolutionize the American housing industry, ushering in a new era of higher quality homes at lower price. That dream has never quite panned out. Can California finally make it happen? …For decades engineers, architects, futurists, industrialists, investors and politicians have been pining for a better, faster and cheaper way to build homes. Now, amid a national housing shortage, the question felt as pressing as ever: What if construction could harness the speed, efficiency, quality control and cost-savings of the assembly line? …What if the United States could mass-produce its way out of a housing crisis? …This year, state legislators in California believe the turning-point might actually be here. With a little state assistance, they want to make 2026 the Year of the Housing Factory. At long last. 
The Berkeley Wood Lab’s research on mass timber production has the potential to improve California’s sustainability by sourcing from local forests. The lab is collaborating with Northern Californian lumber company Mad River Mass Timber, or MRMT. The company will use Californian trees that otherwise would have either been turned into woodchips or burned in a forest fire to build panels that can be used in new housing and commercial buildings. This is the first time these types of panels will be produced locally in California instead of being shipped in from other countries. The technology to create dowel-laminated timber, or DLT, has existed for decades, but the Berkeley Wood Lab adapted it for use in Californian forests. Through the process of making DLT, glue is not required, which enables the timber to be recycled in the future and turned into new material.
ARIZONA — The Forest Service budget to thin the forest is down. But hey, at least there’s a budget. That is the bad news/good news gist of a report on the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative (4-FRI) delivered last week at the Natural Resources Working Group meeting. Fortunately, the state Forestry Department is also continuing to fund thinning projects, including creating buffer zones around forested communities like Payson. However, time may be running out to restore the overgrown, drought-plagued forest. The meeting also featured a report documenting the worsening condition of the forest as thinning efforts falter. Jon Orona, with Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, reported that 2025 was the fifth-driest year ever recorded – with average temperatures between 6 and 12 degrees above normal.
More than 110 million acres of land across the U.S. are protected in 806 federally designated wilderness areas – together an area slightly larger than the state of California. For the most part, these places have been left alone for decades, in keeping with the 1964 Wilderness Act’s directive that they be “untrammeled by man.” But in a time when lands are experiencing the effects of climate change and people are renewing their understanding of Indigenous knowledge and stewardship practices, protecting these places may require action, not inaction. …First, the American ideal that wildlands flourish best in the absence of human management – conflicts with the growing understanding that many wilderness areas are part of the ancestral homelands of Indigenous peoples, who tended those lands for thousands of years. …And second, as climate change and ecological stressors affect wilderness, human intervention could help sustain the very ecological qualities that are protected.
Federal officials are proposing to ramp up logging on 2.5 million acres of western Oregon forests as part of a Trump administration priority to expand domestic timber production. The Bureau of Land Management is asking for public comment on its plan through March 23. The federal agency said last week it would update the Western Oregon Resource Management Plan that governs logging on the state’s checkerboard “O&C forests” located in 18 Oregon counties. Known as O&C lands for having once belonged to the Oregon and California Railroad, the forests produced more than 1 billion board feet of timber annually from 1960 and 1989. …BLM’s latest proposal, issued Feb. 19 … could mean a timber harvest that returns to 1 billion board feet. …Oregon’s timber industry celebrated the latest news… Environmental groups strongly opposed the decision…
ARIZONA — A coalition of local governments, timber industry representatives and environmental groups plans to tell congressional leaders and US Forest Service officials this week that Northern Arizona’s forests — and the timber industry that depends on them — face collapse without construction of a second, 30-megawatt biomass-burning power plant. The group will carry that message to Washington, DC, arguing that a “biomass bottleneck” threatens forest restoration efforts, watersheds and rural communities. Two concurring reports outline the concern: one issued by the Eastern Arizona Counties Organization and the Natural Resources Working Group in the White Mountains, and another from the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership (GFFP) and the Forest Biomass Coalition Working Group. …The report concludes that, while private industry may eventually develop products such as fiberboard or biochar from forest byproducts, only a second biomass-burning plant near Flagstaff or Winslow offers a proven, near-term solution.
Montana — Punch more roads through the forest, and you’ll get more people starting fires, fewer bull trout and an even heftier maintenance bill. Keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place, and you’ll ensure elk have a healthy habitat, and you’ll still be able to reduce wildfire risk. Those were some of the arguments former U.S. Forest Service employees made Friday at the edge of the Silver King Inventoried Roadless Area east of Missoula. Montana Trout Unlimited and the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers hosted the event as the Trump administration takes steps to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule. The rule prohibits building roads and harvesting timber on 30% of Forest Service land in the country, or 60 million acres. In Montana, that’s 6.4 million acres, or 37% of Forest Service land in the state.
A plan to revise the Tongass National Forest Land and Resource Management plan, with a new emphasis on timber and other resource industries as mandated by President Donald Trump, is set to begin a 30-day public comment period. … The 1979 plan for the 16.7-million-acre forest has been revised three times, most recently in 2016, and the agency hopes to publish a new draft plan by this fall. A forest service press release spells out the past and new parameters that will be considered in the revised draft. “Public comments will help identify changes that are needed to the current plan, adopted in 1997, to align with best available science, as well as laws and regulations, including Presidents Trump’s Executive Order 14225 – Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production to support American economies and improve forest health and Executive Order 14153 Unleash Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential, benefitting the Nation and the American citizens who call Alaska home.”
SALEM — A bill meant to reward Oregon landowners for wildfire risk mitigation with more affordable insurance rates will survive until the end of the 2026 legislative session. However, supporters of Senate Bill 1540 haven’t yet reached complete agreement with the insurance industry on the proposal, which could threaten its passage given this year’s time constraints. “It is a challenge to get this done in a 35-day session,” said Kenton Brine, president of the NW Insurance Council, which represents the regional industry. In broad terms, SB 1540 will require insurance companies to consider wildfire mitigation actions in their models for assessing risk, which inform pricing and policy decisions. Insurers will have to submit these models for verification with Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services, but if they don’t, they will still have to offer discounts to landowners who undertake wildfire mitigation steps.
CHEYENNE—A $5.1 million investment that would create the first two ground-based professional wildland firefighting teams in Wyoming history is gaining momentum in the statehouse. On Monday, the Wyoming House of Representatives passed House Bill 36, “Forestry division wildland fire modules.” The bill included an earmark of $2.7 million for one team of firefighters going into the day, but Buffalo Republican Rep. Marilyn Connolly brought an amendment that doubled the funding, providing enough to finance two crews — one each in the eastern and western sides of the state. The former Johnson County emergency management coordinator spoke about her experience being on the ground while wildfires were spreading and resources were lacking. “We need some strike teams, we need engines — and they’re not available,” Connolly said on the House floor. 
Senator Steve Daines received federal agency backing on Thursday for his bill to downgrade three remote Montana landscapes from potential wilderness to regular public forest. Officials from the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management told the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests and Mining they supported Daines’ S.3527, the Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act. Chris French, associate chief for the Forest Service, told the subcommittee the Trump administration didn’t support creating new wildernesses or wilderness study designations. BLM state official John Raby added that his agency was intent on fulfilling the president’s agenda supporting “fire management, recreation, access … and domestic mineral production to the maximum practical extent.” Wilderness status is the highest level of protection for public lands. …Outside the hearing, several environmental organizations criticized Daines’ bill. Barb Cestero, The Wilderness Society’s Montana state director, called it “deeply flawed.”
Oregon entities funded by timber sales want to ensure revenue. For the third consecutive legislative session, a group of Oregon county governments hope to pass a bill requiring more predictable timber harvests in state forests. Similarly to past proposals, House Bill 4105 would require the Oregon Department of Forestry to annually log enough trees to comply with a 10-year “sustainable harvest level” adopted by the agency. If fewer trees are logged than required by the sustainable harvest level, that amount of timber would be added to the next 10-year plan, unless the reduction was due to wildfire, disease or storm damage. …Environmental groups are opposed to HB 4105, similarly to previous versions of the proposal that failed to pass in 2025 and 2024, because they say the ODF already does a good job of estimating logging levels.
COLORADO — Forest experts are warning that Boulder’s foothills could look markedly different this year as a mountain pine beetle outbreak intensifies, with potentially far-reaching impacts on recreation and fire risk. Landowners are urged to watch for signs of beetle infestation. The state has taken action: Gov. Jared Polis announced a task force in December aimed at protecting Front Range forests from mountain pine beetle over the next decade. Boulder County has seen increased beetle activity in several areas, including upper Lefthand Canyon and Jamestown. Years of drought, warmer temperatures and overcrowded forests have weakened trees, creating ideal conditions for beetles to spread rapidly and overwhelm remaining healthy stands. …The brood of beetles already in trees and poised to spread this summer is substantial, according to Colorado State Forest Service entomologist Dan West. “It’s kind of this cake that’s already being baked,” West told Boulder Reporting Lab.
Biological legacies (i.e., materials that persist following disturbance; “legacies”) shape ecosystem functioning and feedbacks to future disturbances, yet how legacies are driven by pre-disturbance ecosystem state and disturbance severity is poorly understood—especially in ecosystems influenced by infrequent and severe disturbances. Focusing on wet temperate forests as an archetype of these ecosystems, we characterized live and dead aboveground biomass 2–5 years post-fire in western Washington and northwestern Oregon, USA, to ask: How do pre-fire stand age and burn severity drive variability in initial post-fire legacies, specifically aboveground biomass carbon and fuel profiles? …Our findings demonstrate the importance of pre-disturbance ecosystem state in dictating many aspects of initial post-disturbance structure and function, with important implications for managing post-fire recovery trajectories in some of Earth’s most productive and high-biomass forests.
COLORADO — The U.S. Forest Service is proposing logging southwest of Glenwood Springs, involving about 2,600 acres in what’s known as the Fourmile area along the borders of Pitkin, Mesa and Garfield counties. The White River National Forest’s proposal includes acreage in all three counties. It involves selective thinning and vegetation clearing in two treatment areas and along several roads to improve forest health, reduce wildfire risk and provide timber, the Forest Service said in a news release. “The timber treatments would improve the forest’s ability to withstand and recover from drought and insect outbreaks by creating more diversity in the size and ages of trees. Additionally, work along roads will strengthen predetermined areas where firefighters could more effectively engage wildfires,” the Forest Service said in its release. …“Active forest management is an important tool for maintaining healthy forests,” Acting Aspen-Sopris District Ranger Jennifer Schuller said in the release. 
MISSOULA, Montana — Forester Sean Steinebach felt stunned when US District Court Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula vacated a federal magistrate judge’s favorable recommendations about the proposed South Plateau timber project. “Judge Molloy is a thorn in my side,” said Steinebach, outreach forester for Sun Mountain Lumber, based in Deer Lodge. …Molloy’s ruling was filed Dec. 11, vacating March 31 recommendations by Magistrate Judge Kathleen DeSoto that had allowed the project to proceed. Sun Mountain Lumber operates a sawmill in Deer Lodge and one in Livingston. …Steinebach said incessant lawsuits by environmental groups like the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Council on Wildlife and Fish sabotage timber projects, threaten sawmill communities, loggers and others. …One key issue for Judge Molloy was secure habitat for grizzly bears, but Canada lynx habitat was also a concern. Both are considered threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
University of Oregon Assistant Research Professor James Johnston said he was taught that when a large fire burned a moist, Western Cascade forest to the ground, and the area didn’t burn for hundreds of years afterward, that’s what created a complex, old-growth landscape. Instead, his study found that ancient tree stumps in the Mount Hood and Willamette National Forests had burn scars from multiple fires over their long lives. It’s the first time tree-ring scars have been used to document fire records in the region. Johnston said forests are complex because of—not in spite of—lower-severity wildfires which don’t kill many of the trees. …Johnston said to figure out the best ways to foster healthy forests, relatively recent upheavals also need to be considered. Those include clearcuts, human infrastructure at the margins of forests, and hotter and drier weather patterns.
OLYMPIA, WA – Two Washington tribal leaders could soon sit on the state’s Board of Natural Resources, which guides logging sales and other management decisions on public land. Sen. Claudia Kauffman, a Democrat and first Native American woman to serve in the state Senate, proposed Senate Bill 5838. On Monday, it was voted out of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources. The bill originally called for only one tribal representative, but it was changed to two members as it moved through the committee process. The proposal is backed by Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove, who chairs the board and leads the Department of Natural Resources. The department requested the legislation. If enacted, the governor would appoint a tribal representative from each side of the Cascades… Eligible tribal members must hold an elected position in a federally recognized tribe whose reservation or treaty-ceded lands are in Washington.
Anytime someone talks about shifting management of federal lands to Idaho, know that they have a bigger goal in mind. In a recent interview on The Ranch Podcast, Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, was frank about his goals for public lands in Idaho. He said his father, former Rep. Eric Redman, dreamed of Idaho taking ownership of federal lands, and his goal is the same. The first step is for Idaho to manage public lands for a bit, then the state takes ownership of them. “How do we get that federal land back in ownership for the state?” Rep. Jordan Redman said. Back? It should be said that Idaho has never owned federal land. Redman should try reading the Constitution he swore to uphold: “… the people of the state of Idaho do agree and declare that we forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof … .” You can’t get back what you never owned; you can only take it. In service of the goal of taking federal land, Redman made a familiar argument.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Scientists say multiple Earth system components appear closer to destabilization than previously believed, putting the planet at increased risk of a “hothouse” trajectory driven by feedback loops that can amplify the consequences of global warming. “The risk of a hothouse Earth 
FREMONT, Nebraska — Fremont wood processor Horizon Biofuels will be fined up to $147,500 by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration for “willful and serious safety violations after a deadly explosion at the company’s Fremont facility in July 2025,” the US Department of Labor announced. Horizon has until Feb. 19 to decide whether it wants to appeal the citation, according to a spokesperson with the Kansas City OSHA office. …The explosion killed 32-year-old employee Dylan Danielson and his two daughters, both under the age of 12. The violations include “combustible dust buildup, failure to ensure equipment within the facility was protected from creating an ignition source and lack of fall protection for employees working at heights greater than four feet,” the Department of Labor said. …The Nebraska State Fire Marshal’s office also has a pending investigation.