GRANTS PASS and BROOKINGS, Oregon — Chinook Forest Partners, a forestland investment manager located in Southwest Oregon, announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire South Coast Lumber Co. and affiliates. This acquisition encompasses 104,000 acres of premium coastal forest with modern manufacturing facilities. …Mike Beckley, CEO and President of South Coast said, “We are confident they will honor the legacy the Fallert family has built over four generations, while helping South Coast reach new levels of growth and opportunity.” …The transaction is expected to finalize before year-end 2025, pending customary closing conditions.
PORT OF LONGVIEW, Washington — If Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels has its way, the Port of Longview may soon have a $2.4 billion sustainable aviation fuel plant. But the mega-project to turn timber waste into jet fuel has faced a slew of challenges on its way to landing at the giant riverfront Barlow Point site, a deal that’s still not inked after nearly four years. The people behind Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels say the project is mere weeks away from finding the financing needed to lock in a site and build the plant — the first of a handful of additional facilities around the region to fulfill Delta Airlines’ immense need for sustainable aviation fuel. To port officials, however, the project is one of about 20 that have considered its flagship Barlow Point site, any one of which could put money down today and start the long process of realizing a mega-project there tomorrow. 
OLYMPIA, Washington — Washington state is investing $700,000 to support its apple and timber industries, creating at least 270 new jobs, Governor Bob Ferguson announced Thursday. The funding comes from the state’s Economic Development Strategic Reserve Fund, which uses unclaimed lottery prize money to help attract and retain jobs. The money will be split across three projects: Yakima County: $250,000 to prepare a site in Sunnyside for a new apple products processing plant. Forks: $200,000 for infrastructure upgrades at the Forks Industrial Park, where Riverside Forest Products USA plans a sawmill. Spokane Valley: $250,000 to expand a manufacturing facility for Mercer Mass Timber. Governor Ferguson said the investments, combined with private funding, will strengthen the state’s economy. Commerce Director Joe Nguyễn added the funds will help meet infrastructure needs, support local businesses, and create sustainable jobs.
HELENA, Mont. — The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) has launched an online interactive map showing forest product manufacturers across the state. The new tool helps landowners, contractors, and community members locate nearby mills and connect with partners for forest management and wood processing projects. Each facility listing includes details such as product types, wood species used, and company size, with direct links to their websites. “Beyond helping Montanans find nearby mills, the map highlights manufacturing capacity that supports forest restoration, fuels reduction, and local jobs,” said Marc Vessar, DNRC forest practices program manager.
CORVALLIS, Oregon – Rising wildfire risk in the Pacific Northwest combined with notoriously volatile timber pricing may lower forestland values by as much as 50% and persuade plantation owners to harvest trees much earlier than planned, a 
BOISI, Idaho — The Trump Administration’s decision earlier this year to do away with the 2001 Roadless Area Conseravtion Rule on national forest lands sent shockwaves through environmental and outdoor recreation communities. According to environmentalists and an Idaho public official who has been involved in roadless rule politics since the issue’s inception, the move could transport stakeholders in the Pacific Northwest back to the rancor and political divisions of the timber war years. …“The national rule itself put the whole timber wars to bed. It really did,” said James Caswell, former director of the Bureau of Land Management. …The rule led to conditions in which environmentalists became less combative about forest management, according to Caswell. Instead, enviros became more willing to work with timber industry and Forest Service officials. …The decision puts the forest objectives of fishermen, hunters, ATVers, bird watchers and others on the back burner.
PORTLAND, Oregon — The question of whether two logging companies conspired to monopolize markets in an eastern Oregon forest came before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday as a coalition urged the court to revive its antitrust challenge. US Circuit Judge Milan Smith noted the case was unlike other antitrust suits. …In 2013, the U.S. Forest Service granted the logging company Iron Triangle a 10-year stewardship contract for the Malheur National Forest, as well as associated logging rights. A group of landowners, loggers and an eastern Oregon lumber sawmill — known collectively as the Malheur Forest Coalition — sued Iron Triangle in 2022, arguing that the company exploited control of the contract and should be blocked from competing for harvest rights in U.S. Forest Service public auctions. The lower court denied the request, prompting a new complaint adding the Malheur Lumber Company as a defendant.
A federal judge has halted a logging project in the Kootenai National Forest, saying the federal government failed to correctly analyze the impacts to grizzly bears. The Knotty Pine Project, a 10-year project that would have authorized 7,465 acres of prescribed burning and 2,593 acres of commercial harvest in the Cabinet-Yaak Mountains, has been in litigation since 2022. The Center for Biological Diversity led a coalition of environmental groups …in suing the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, saying it could devastate the small group of grizzly bears that lives in the region due to increased roadwork. U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen granted a preliminary junction the following year, but issued his final ruling last week. …“High road densities in low elevation habitats may result in grizzly bear avoidance or displacement from important spring habitat and high mortality risks,” Christensen wrote.
For more than 15 years, Scott Fitzwilliams led … the “crown jewel” of U.S. federal land — 2.2 million acres in Colorado that includes world class ski resorts… and sees a lot of wildfire. So when he was told in February to fire more than a dozen U.S. Forest Service employees from White River National Forest, one of his main concerns was: Will enough people be around to make sure the next big blaze doesn’t get out of control? …Fitzwilliams resigned in protest over the cuts, part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce… Eight months later, a new report confirms some of Fitzwilliams’s fears. A data analysis shared with The Washington Post found that as of the end of September, Forest Service work to reduce fire-fueling debris was down nearly 40 percent on this date compared with where it has been on average over the previous four years… [A subscription to the Washington Post is required for full story access]
A yearslong endeavor to change logging and environmental policies for millions of acres of Pacific Northwest forests is getting a restart. The US Forest Service will update the Northwest Forest Plan, a set of policies that broadly dictates where logging can occur on 25 million acres of forests in Oregon, Washington and northwest California. …Environmental groups worry new changes that could be made to this plan under the Trump administration will increase logging in mature and old-growth forests. …The Forest Service published its proposed changes in a draft environmental impact statement in November 2024 and received over 3,400 public comments. Now the Forest Service under the Trump administration wants to issue a new draft. …A Forest Service spokesperson said the agency will publish a new draft amendment next fall, and that the Forest Service will allow people to review the draft and weigh in during a 90-day public comment period.
SEATTLE — …Of Washington’s 22 million forested acres, the Department of Natural Resources manages about 3 million acres of state land. Of those, 545,000 acres are now dead or dying — the equivalent of more than 500,000 football fields. …Washington’s severe drought has weakened trees across the state. Then came powerful storms—including last November’s bomb cyclone and February’s windstorm—that battered already-stressed trees to their breaking point. …As droughts intensify and insects thrive in warming forests, trees are dying of thirst while being eaten alive. It’s a double assault turning once-green mountainsides into graveyards of standing dead timber—impacting both eastern and western Washington. “We’re concerned this trend could continue as our climate continues to warm,” Commissioner Upthegrove said. One solution is to remove dead or dying trees and replant more resilient species like hemlock or cedar. However, according to the DNR, the funding needed to address these issues has vanished.
A new bill poised to pass the Senate after clearing the House will govern how the federal government thins, burns and otherwise manages nearly 200 million acres of the nation’s forests. The Fix Our Forests Act, sponsored by U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., John Curtis, R-Utah, Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., and Alex Padilla, D-Calif., passed out of Senate committee recently in a rare show of bipartisan support, with 18 senators in favor and only five opposed. “There is a wildfire crisis across much of the country — our communities need action now,” said Hickenlooper in a news release. “Wildfires won’t wait.” The proposed legislation — the first major congressional effort to fight wildfires in recent history — includes provisions that promote prescribed burning and forest thinning in fire-prone areas along with working with communities to create defensible space around vulnerable homes. The bill formally recognizes wetlands as buffers against wildfires and encourages cross-boundary programs among counties, states and tribes.
A Montana logging project in grizzly habitat in the Kootenai National Forest will remain on hold until federal officials reassess how road use — particularly illegal road use — impacts the bears, a federal judge ruled on Monday. “This court has repeatedly held that it is arbitrary and capricious to not include illegal motorized use that it knows to occur into calculations, regardless of whether the use is chronic and site specific,” U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen wrote in the 40-page opinion. The Center for Biological Diversity led environmental groups in suing the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2022, seeking to block the Knotty Pine Project, and Christensen granted the environmentalists’ motion for a preliminary injunction the following year. …Christensen found the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a hard look at the impact of unauthorized road use on grizzly bears.
SOUTH BEND, Washington — Pacific County Commissioners Jerry Doyle, Lisa Olsen and David Tobin sent a scathing letter on Oct. 20 to the Washington Forest Practices Board (FPB) regarding a proposed increase in timber-harvest buffer zones along streams. Rural counties and forestry groups are mounting a vigorous push against bigger setbacks away from small non-salmon-bearing streams, arguing that over the course of time the loss of timber acreage will add up to billions in lost local economic activity and millions less taxes that currently support government services. Washington state established the Forest Practices Act and the FPB in 1974. It is tasked with establishing laws to “protect salmon, clean water, and the working forest economy.”
Washington’s lands commissioner, Dave Upthegrove, is on a mission to secure $60 million of additional wildfire funding in next year’s legislative session, despite a tightening budget outlook. On Monday, he and a leading Democratic House lawmaker indicated that they want to tap revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade program for at least some of that money. The maneuver would mean turning to a steady-flowing stream of cash at a time when the state’s operating budget is squeezed. “Climate Commitment Act dollars are going to be on the table,” said state Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, who is deputy House majority leader. Lawmakers this year already started dedicating some of the climate dollars to the wildfire programs in question. At issue is funding provided under a 2021 law known as House Bill 1168, which passed with broad bipartisan support. With that legislation, lawmakers committed to direct $500 million over eight years to wildfire programs.
Fall is the busy season for forestry work, like fuels reduction. Summer fire restrictions have ended, and winter snow has not yet arrived. But Armando Lopez, owner of DL Reforestation in Jackson County, said the federal government shutdown has put his work on hold. Inspectors can’t visit project areas, and he’s waiting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments. Every day, he eagerly checks whether the government has reopened. …Lopez employs around 40 workers, most of them on temporary H-2B visas. If the shutdown doesn’t end next week, Lopez said, he won’t be able to pay them. …The Oregon Department of Forestry said in a statement that payment delays for contractors like Lopez are varied, depending on the federal agency and funding source. …But U.S. Forest Service, state, private and tribal forestry awards are continuing.
EUGENE, Oregon — With the Trump administration poised to rewrite forest management policy, groups are on guard for changes to climate and lumber harvesting sections. Travis Joseph has a message for environmental groups worried that the Pacific Northwest’s oldest trees are about to fall to loggers: Timber companies don’t really want to cut them down. Joseph, who heads a timber industry group and is a former aide to ex-Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, made that proclamation. …“I love these trees, too,” said Joseph, CEO of the American Forest Resource Council (AFRC). “But they’re at risk. Let’s save them. Let’s come in here and protect them.” Joseph’s group says the threat to big trees in western Oregon — these giants were 5 or 6 feet across at the trunk — isn’t logging. It’s wildfire that’s becoming a bigger menace as climate change makes summers hotter and reduces the winter snowpack. [to access the full story a subscription is required]
Oregon’s 2025 fire season officially wrapped up Friday with significantly fewer acres burned — and at a lower cost to the state — than in previous years. But fires this year got much closer to communities, burning 200 homes and structures. …And humans caused most of this year’s fires. Oregon experienced more than 1,100 fires from early June to mid-October. They burned roughly 350,000 acres, far less than the 1.9 million acres that burned in 2024. Fires this year also cost the state less to fight. …The U.S. Forest Service has had a target for nearly a century of keeping at least 90% of wildfires from growing larger than 10 acres. But it has come under scrutiny by some indigenous wildfire and ecology experts and scientists, as well as Forest Service scientists. They argue that some wildfires must be allowed to burn more acres to help regenerate plants that support animal habitats, reduce pest infestation and invasive species and keep ecosystems healthy.
The Fix Our Forests Act passed out of a Senate committee Tuesday, and now heads to a full vote. Some environmental groups are warning that a federal bill intended to prevent major wildfires could effectively increase logging, cattle grazing and mining on federal lands — which make up half of Oregon’s land base. The bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act passed out of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday and now heads to the Senate floor for a final vote. It could overhaul how the nation prepares its land for wildfires, while also scaling back environmental oversight of land management projects. The bill has conservationists divided. On one side, some advocates say it would bring long-needed changes by fast-tracking prescribed fires. …On the other side, environmental groups say the bill significantly weakens environmental protections and public oversight.
CLANCY, Montana — Healthy forests depend on a strong forest products industry. Sawmills help support thousands of Montana jobs, reduce wildfire risks, and provide a renewable resource. Despite recent mill closures in Missoula and Seeley Lake, Marks Lumber in Clancy continues to carry on. …Both Roseburg Forest Products in Missoula and Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake closed last year. Marks Lumber has been open for 36 years, and they have adapted to industry changes before. “ …In light of the recent closures, they have made some changes, including shifting to more board production (processed wood) rather than the raw tree, which is more expensive to manufacture, and slowing down on how much logging they do. Marks Lumber also had to change where their sawdust and chips go. Roseburg used to buy that material, but now they send them to Weyerhaeuser Forest Products in Columbia Falls.
Western Colorado — Communities across the Western Slope need scientifically sound, effective action that actually helps protect our forests and communities. That’s why so many of us are paying attention to the Fix Our Forests Act, now moving through Congress. …The Act leans heavily on boosting logging, and yes, thinning trees in the right places can improve forest health. The problem is that an agenda driven by timber harvesting often causes companies to cut the largest-diameter trees to meet timber quotas set by Washington, D.C. Instead, restoration forestry is the science-backed solution that we really need. …There are real solutions to today’s forestry challenges. …We have the tools – they just need more funding and staff to do the job. …I urge our senators to do all they can to improve the bill before final passage, keeping the public at the table, as they the most to lose if we don’t get this right.
Despite the Trump administration’s pledge to aggressively clear overgrowth from national forests, the U.S. Forest Service is falling significantly short on wildfire mitigation work. By mid-September, the agency had only treated about 2.2 million acres through thinning and prescribed burns. That’s far short of the over 4 million acres treated during the last year of the Biden administration, and it’s also behind the agency’s annual average over the past decade. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz blamed “operational challenges” and said agency resources were diverted to help battle blazes in Canada. However, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is blaming the slowdown in fuel treatments on the Trump administration firing thousands of Forest Service employees earlier this year. …the government shutdown has stopped wildfire prevention efforts across the country’s entire 193 million acres of national forest land [at] the ideal time for the agency to conduct safe prescribed burns across the West.
Roughly 500 years ago in California’s High Sierra, pine cones dropped to the ground and a cycle began. …Half a millennia later, US Forest Service scientists began testing strategies to save these now ancient and massive trees in the little-known area east of Fresno called the Teakettle Experimental Forest. They had plans to light a huge prescribed burn to clear overgrowth next year. But then the Garnet Fire ignited and scorched all 3,000 federally protected acres on its path through the Sierra National Forest. …Scott Scherbinski, a biologist at the Climate & Wildfire Institute, said “It will be a start-over event for this forest.” …Malcolm North, a Forest Service ecologist said…fires with less intensity can be beneficial in California’s fire-adapted landscapes, but the Garnet Fire, when it burned through in September, may have killed most trees and sterilized the ground — making it unlikely the forest can rebound without intervention. [to access the full story a San Francisco Chronicle subscription is required]
Drought and insects have killed an unprecedented number of Oregon’s Douglas fir trees during the last decade, costing billions in timber value, damaging infrastructure and ramping up wildfire danger. Beginning in 2015 and accelerating with the 2021 heat dome, roughly 635,000 acres of forest have been impacted by what’s known as Douglas fir “dieback” in southwest Oregon and the Willamette Valley. “It’s hitting trees of all sizes, but it’s hitting larger and older trees the hardest,” Max Bennett, a retired forest researcher with Oregon State University, told members of the Oregon Legislature on Sept. 30. “What we’re seeing now is unprecedented.” The dieback has led to $1.1 billion in lost timber value, $500 million in potential road hazard costs and created a tinderbox of forest fuel capable of spawning the West’s most destructive wildfires, a group of foresters and researchers told the House Committee on Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources and Water.
OREGON — George Sexton said he’s attended a couple dozen timber auctions during his 23 years as conservation director at KS Wild, an Ashland-based environmental group. But when he showed up at the Bureau of Land Management office in Medford on Sept. 25 for a timber auction, he, a lawyer and a reporter for Jefferson Public Radio were not allowed to enter. Sexton said that for years, he’s attended the auctions to observe and make sure BLM follows its laws and that bidders know about potential lawsuits. In this case, KS Wild is planning litigation to stop the “Take A Chance” timber sale, one of the four that was being offered. Sexton said the public has only been blocked from the meetings recently, coinciding with the Trump administration’s focus on increasing logging. BLM said closing timber auctions isn’t a new policy and that it was never intended as a “public meeting.”
IDAHO — After a slew of firings and deferred resignations last winter, the loss of federal workers left holes throughout the Northwest. “When we get to peak fire season, it’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck call, if you will,” said Jim Wimer, a fire prevention officer for the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. US Forest Service employees who are normally in the office — like wildlife biologists or hydrologists — jumped in to help with fire information this summer, he said. …Workers even drove trucks with supplies to wildfires, often working overtime to help, he said. Not only does it help local fire efforts, but it also gets people out to other parts of the country to gain unique experiences and helps other forests that are in similar situations, Wimer said. …This year, there have been 364 fires on land the agency manages, but not a lot of acreage burned, he said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced this summer it was moving to rescind the Roadless Rule, a 2001 law that protects large swaths of National Forest land from development. That includes more than half of the Tongass National Forest, where Juneau is located. On Saturday, more than 100 people gathered in the state capital to protest the move. …Alaska’s Congressional delegation unanimously supports the rollback of the Roadless Rule. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has said that most of the Tongass would still be protected without it — the parts of the forest that are already designated as wilderness. …But protesters say Alaskans have more to lose in risks to the land and waterways than what they have to gain through further development. Lingít elders and fishing and tourism industry experts took the mic Saturday to deliver a message: the Roadless Rule should be left alone.
Mark Harmon, a longtime faculty member at Oregon State University, has been watching number 219, and more than 500 other logs nearby, decay for 40 years. He has trekked to this site in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a watershed nestled in Oregon’s western Cascade Mountains, at least 100 times. His goal: establish an exhaustive baseline dataset that any scientist could use to test hypotheses about tree decomposition or to compare patterns of decomposition in the Pacific Northwest with those in other regions. …In a 2020 analysis, Harmon and his colleagues estimated that decay rates can vary by a whopping 244-fold across species and climates. …Scientists used to assume that decomposition was instantaneous, Harmon says—that when a tree dies, it essentially disappears. “But that’s not true anywhere on Earth, and it’s never been true,” he says. A dead tree is “just a transition to something else.”
ARIZONA — Restoring Arizona’s wildfire-threatened forests depends on building a second biomass-burning power plant, a coalition of public officials and timber industry executives said. The state’s only biomass-burning plant is operating at capacity, which means many forest thinning and restoration projects will stall without a second plant to process low-value wood slash and biomass, speakers said at the October meeting of the Natural Resources Working Group. “It’s a biomass apocalypse,” said Brad Worsley, head of Novo BioPower, the state’s only biomass-burning power plant. Eastern Arizona Counties Executive Director Pascal Berlioux said he was frustrated by the lack of state and federal action after years of discussion about how to make forest restoration economical. …Novo BioPower in Snowflake remains the state’s only biomass-burning power plant. …Worsley said the plant survived shortages caused by delays in Forest Service approval of thinning projects and is now operating at its limit.
As the planet heats up, we need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. …‘nature-based climate solutions’ are human interventions that utilize natural processes to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. According to William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah, planting forests is an especially promising option. “The central opportunity here is that we can leverage nature,” Anderegg says, “and forests globally have pretty large potential to help with climate change mitigation.” [However], Anderegg says …there are many problems with the programs that seek to plant forests as a climate solution. 
BILLINGS, Montana — A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit from young climate activists seeking to block President Donald Trump’s executive orders promoting fossil fuels and discouraging renewable energy. U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen said the plaintiffs showed overwhelming evidence climate change affects them and that it will worsen as a result of Trump’s orders. But Christensen concluded their request for the courts to intervene was “unworkable” because it was beyond the power of the judiciary to create environmental policies. The 22 plaintiffs included youths who prevailed in a landmark climate trial against the state of Montana in 2023. …Legal experts said the young activists and their lawyers from the environmental group Our Children’s Trust faced long odds in the federal case. …The climate activists will appeal Wednesday’s ruling, said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust.
Storing carbon in forests is an essential, nature-based buffer against climate change. Yet forests packed with too many trees increase the threat of severe wildfires… A team of UC Merced and collaborating researchers evaluated the tradeoffs between two seemingly opposing scenarios: Trees are critical because they pull carbon dioxide from the air, preventing carbon from adding to greenhouse effects that trap heat and warm the atmosphere; and the increasing severity and danger of wildfires call for the thinning of overly dense forests. The researchers found that the best approach is a combination of both. 
EASTERN OREGON — More than $7.4 million to support removal and transport of 417,308 tons of low-value trees and woody debris from national forests to processing facilities is being allocated to Eastern Oregon forests. The allocation includes a critical $4.6 million award to support the forest products industry in Grant County. Two other projects are in or near Wallowa County, Oregon’s US Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley announced Friday, Sept. 19. This $7.4 million investment from the U.S. Forest Service’s Hazardous Fuels Transportation Assistance Program will be distributed as follows: Heartwood Biomass Inc. in Wallowa: $773,031; Boise Cascade Wood Products LLC in Elgin: $385,138; Iron Triangle LLC in John Day: $4,665,063;Dodge Logging Inc. in Maupin: $648,000; Gilchrist Forest Products LLC in Gilchrist: $588,648; Rude Logging LLC in John Day: $410,748.
A firefighter from Minnesota died Friday while helping the United States Forest Service with a controlled burn in Idaho, officials say. The Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) says Isabella Oscarson had been struck by a falling tree while assisting the U.S. Forest Service’s Tinker Bugs with a prescribed fire in the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. She was evacuated from the scene and flown to a hospital in Grangeville, Idaho, where she later died. Oscarson was a seasonal employee with the IDL. “IDL extends its deepest sympathies to Isabella’s family and friends. This is a tragedy that hits the employees at Idaho Department of Lands and the broader wildland fire community extremely hard,” Dustin Miller, director of IDL, said. Idaho Gov. Brad Little ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff to honor Oscarson until the day following her memorial service.
