The Death of the US Forest Service Is Overdue

By Andy Kerr
The Wildlife News
December 14, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

In the face of the Trump 2.0 onslaught against the nation’s public lands, most of the public lands conservation community has instinctively defended the landscape. As we should. However, we have also reflexively defended the federal bureaucracies charged with administering the nation’s public lands and waters that are under Trumpian assault. But we should not. The public lands conservation community needs to be visionary, not reactionary. The nation’s federal public lands are worth defending, but not so the nation’s public land agencies. In the case of the Forest Service, the agency has behaved indefensibly and irredeemably and should be scrapped for parts. …Though the agency touts itself as a multiple-use agency… in the end timber production trumps protection of wildlife and water quality, preservation of beauty, provision of recreation. …The rationale of timber supply to the nation no longer resonates. In fact, only about 4% of the nation’s wood supply.

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