#forest management

Rabbit issues. North American fauna. 1908. Fort Simpson, NWT, Canada.

To guard against the loss of spruce trees resulting from rabbit eating habits (below), foresters set traps against the rodents (above).

Crime, corruption and conflict shaped Normandy’s medieval forests as peasants, monasteries, merchants and royal officials competed over valuable resources.

WHY Is America The Biggest Lumber Importer In The World? | Mike Albrecht...

Excerpt from this story from Earth Island Journal:

FIVE YEARS AGO this summer, one of the most destructive wildfires in California history burned a 40‑mile swath across the Sierra Nevada Range as it launched towering plumes of smoke and ash into the stratosphere. Today, the Caldor Fire is largely remembered for the “Christmas Valley Miracle” — a legendary tale of firefighting prowess and bureaucratic foresight that supposedly saved the resort communities on the south shore of Lake Tahoe from incineration.

Since then, the US Forest Service has transformed the story into a powerful PR weapon. Through slick videos, celebratory press releases, and congressional testimony, the agency highlights its mechanical forest‑thinning projects — bureaucratically branded as “forest health treatments” — as the reason South Lake Tahoe survived.

The Forest Service’s Caldor Fire narrative is now steering federal wildfire policy. An order signed in April 2025 by US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins authorizes the agency to thin up to 112 million acres of national forest land across the country — or nearly 60 percent of the national forest system. Congress is considering codifying the mandate through the Fix Our Forests Act, which would fast‑track logging projects by shortening environmental reviews and restricting judicial oversight, even within national parks and wilderness areas. The bill has passed the House and awaits action in the Senate.

Not surprisingly, industry groups such as the American Loggers Council are aggressively promoting the bill. But some conservation organizations are also in favor of the measure, including The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, and the National Audubon Society. They are gambling on the idea that they can trade away elements of public oversight (like limiting judicial review) in exchange for logging that focuses strictly on thinning small-diameter trees.

Many other conservation groups, like the Sierra Club and Oregon Wild, are strongly opposed. “This legislation would hand over more authority to Trump’s agencies managing public lands at a time when that is the last thing we should be doing,” says Erik Fernandez, wilderness program manager for Oregon Wild. “This bill has all the right buzz words about fire but is really all about ramping up logging on public lands.”

The Fix Our Forests Act and the thinning directive from Secretary Rollins are part of a broader effort to dismantle decades of conservation policy and clear the way for the industrialization of America’s forests. On March 31, the Trump administration dissolved the US Forest Service’s decentralized regional office structure — a system dating back to Gifford Pinchot — and shifted authority toward state-level control, heavily aligned with timber-industry priorities. The move closed 57 of 77 research stations and zeroed out the forest science budget request for fiscal year 2027, eliminating the agency’s capacity to conduct independent research. The Trump administration has also proposed eliminating roadless area protections across 44 million acres of national forest and ordered a 25-percent increase in national timber production.

June 24, 2025: Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has announced that the administration will be rescinding the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to open up 59 million acres of national forestry to increased logging. Development of these long-protected public lands will invite wildfires and put habitats, biodiversity, and drinking water quality at risk.

April 6, 2025: Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins issued a new directive that establishes an “Emergency Situation Determination” to fast-track timber production on 113 million acres of national forestry—roughly half the land managed by the U.S. Forest Service—by removing National Environmental Policy Act regulations.

The Trump administration has issued an executive order that directs the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Forest Service to act quickly to increase domestic timber production across 280 million acres of national forests and public lands under their collective management. The order also instructs agencies to bypass environmental laws and regulations that are meant to ensure that all use of public lands, including logging, are done sustainably.

Appropriate forest management is crucial for wildfire prevention, clean water and air, carbon capture, and wildlife, including the preservation of endangered species. The Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act both require a careful and good faith effort to consider the environmental impact of forest projects, even in the context of an emergency.

This unregulated expansion of logging not only risks the longterm viability of our public lands, but allowing it to proceed without adequately assessing its impact on air quality, water quality, and wildfire risk also compromises public safety. Congress must hold the Trump administration accountable to current environmental law and oppose this effort to undermine the protections that work to preserve our public lands and the safety of every American.

NJ foresters have a unique way of killing the extremely invasive tree-of-heaven: using the newly arrived invasive spotted lattern fly. An unlikely ally for killing its alien host plant