{"id":375069,"date":"2025-04-14T21:07:51","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T19:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=375069"},"modified":"2025-04-14T21:07:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T19:07:53","slug":"america-returns-to-active-forest-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=375069","title":{"rendered":"America returns to active forest management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From CFACT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Duggan Flanakin<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Back on March 1, President Trump fired a double-barrel shotgun at the long-held preservationist U.S. mantra that for nearly a century has dealt heavy blows to American forests, forest animals, and the humans whose homes abut government forest lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They first addressed<\/a> what the White House calls \u201cthe threat to national security from imports of timber and lumber.\u201d Even though the U.S. has ample timber resources, the nation has been a net importer of lumber since 2016. \u201cWood products,\u201d said the President, play \u201ca vital role in key downstream civilian industries, including construction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reliance on imported lumber became critical during the COVID<\/a> pandemic when the producer price of softwood veneer and plywood manufacturing over tripled from $205 in January 2020 to $702 in June 2021; the December 2024 price was still higher than the pre-COVID peak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That upward jerk devastated the home-building industry. Contractors who had hoped construction prices would return to pre-pandemic levels are still waiting, and the short-term effects of the Trump tariffs could keep prices high for months to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, Trump\u2019s second order<\/a>, a call for the immediate expansion of U.S. timber production, provides hope to the logging and construction industries and home buyers. The order also returns to the wisdom of indigenous communities, who managed American forests with fire for millennia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logging and controlled burns have been under attack since the Wilsonian \u201cProgressive\u201d Era. Progressive federal and state government policies restricting common-sense logging and fuel breaks led to overgrown forests that quickly burn out of control. The result is ever-increasing threats to property, human and animal lives, and environmental damage, including air pollution, water pollution, and loss of habitat and species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The market-focused environmental nonprofit PERC urges the nation to \u201cFix America\u2019s Forests,\u201d which are \u201cin trouble\u201d thanks to a century of fire suppression that has disrupted natural fire cycles and impaired forest health.. Trees die in national forests from insect infestations, drought, and disease caused by overly dense forests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To \u201cfix\u201d our forests, PERC (Property and Environment Research Center) called for active forest management, including prescribed fires and mechanical thinning. Overlapping regulations, litigation, and inadequate funds for proper management have left our forests vulnerable. PERC\u2019s solution is to reduce existing regulatory hurdles and find more creative funding approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keith Schneider of the water newsroom Circle of Blue says Trump\u2019s forest management plan boosts logging on federal lands, increases tariffs on Canadian lumber, and expedites timber approvals to reduce wildfire risks and support the U.S. timber industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe White House,\u201d says Schneider, contends, \u201cOur inability to fully exploit our domestic timber supply has impeded the creation of jobs and prosperity, contributed to wildfire disasters, degraded fish and wildlife habitats, increased the cost of construction and energy, and threatened our economic security.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To oversee this dramatic change in federal forest policy, Trump appointed widely respected forestry expert Tom Schultz to head the Forest Service. One of his tasks will be to enable shorter timeframes for evaluating logging plans for their impact on endangered species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well-funded environmental groups immediately claimed that the Trump policy increases the human imprint on \u201csacred\u201d forest lands. Inside Climate News<\/em> called<\/a> the order \u201can assault on the nation\u2019s public forests\u201d that \u201cremoves protections\u201d and will surely destroy massive swaths of older, fire-resilient trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danna Smith, executive director at North Carolina\u2019s Dogwood Alliance, called<\/a> the Trump order \u201cabsolutely the wrong direction and a devastating blow.\u201d Even as wildfires raged in the Carolinas, killing trees and wildlife, Smith claimed that selective logging and removal of dead trees would harm \u201cstanding forests\u201d that are vital to fighting the climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irony appears lost to those clinging to the failed federal policy of yesteryear\u2019s progressives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not Trump\u2019s first rodeo with forest management. His January 2019 order<\/a> required the Interior and Agriculture Departments to collaborate with state, tribal, and local partners to create a comprehensive wildfire strategy to prioritize highest-risk lands. That order sought to reduce hazardous fuel loads, mitigate fire risk, and ensure the safety and stability of local communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mantra \u2013 then as now \u2013 was \u201cactive forest management.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years later, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced that Interior had reduced wildfire risk across 1.5 million acres in fiscal year 2020. The four-year total of 5.4 million acres was 49% higher than during Obama\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department of the Interior\u2019s record included offering 763 board feet of timber for sale, addressing non-native and invasive species across over a million acres, protecting water quality and mitigating flooding and erosion risks from wildfires on 1.7 million acres, and reducing fuel loads on 1.5 million acres. They also maintained public access roads to provide access for emergency services and restoration work across 20,000 miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 2020, Bernhardt signed<\/a> a final decision to construct and maintain a system of up to 11,000 miles of strategically placed fuel breaks to control wildfires within 223 million acres of federal lands in Western states. The Bureau of Land Management had assessed more than 1,400 fuel breaks since 2002 and determined that 79% were effective in controlling wildfires and 84% helped change fire behavior for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An early test<\/a> of the Trump forest policy is playing out in fire-ravaged San Bernardino, thanks to an emergency order issued by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to increase timber quotas in America\u2019s national forests by 25%. Opponents scoffed that \u201cthey are after timber.\u201d Still, according to<\/a> the U.S. Forest Service, charred portions of the forest burned in the Eaton Fire remain at \u201csignificant\u201d risk of debris flows, flooding, and mudslides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rollins says that streamlining permits for increased logging will help \u201cachieve relief from threats to public health and safety, critical infrastructure, and\/or mitigation of threats to natural resources.\u201d The result will be improved durability, resilience, and resistance to fire, insects, and disease within national forests and grasslands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe increasing domestic logging will help revive an American industry as old as America itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article originally appeared at Townhall<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back on March 1, President Trump fired a double-barrel shotgun at the long-held preservationist U.S. mantra that for nearly a century has dealt heavy blows to American forests, forest animals, and the humans whose homes abut government forest lands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":375073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691834471,691834472,691834473,691834474,691834475,691833487],"class_list":{"0":"post-375069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-active-forest-management","9":"tag-home-building-industry","10":"tag-natural-fire-cycles","11":"tag-perc-property-and-environment-research-center","12":"tag-tom-schultz","13":"tag-us-president-donald-j-trump","15":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0forest-managment-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1zzv","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":438736,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=438736","url_meta":{"origin":375069,"position":0},"title":"Reviving U.S. Refining: Trump Announces Brownsville Project as First in Decades","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"11\/04\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"US President Trump announced on March 11, 2026 (via Truth Social) that America First Refining will build the first new major U.S. oil refinery in nearly 50 years. 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