
Trump Administration Rolls Back Forest Protections In Bid To Ramp Up Logging
HuffPost
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins did not mention climate change in Friday's directive, which called on her staff to speed up environmental reviews.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration acted to roll back environmental safeguards around future logging projects on more than half of U.S. national forests under an emergency designation announced Friday that cites dangers from wildfires.
Whether the move will boost lumber supplies as Trump envisioned in an executive order last month remains to be seen. Former President Joe Biden’s administration also sought more logging in public forests to combat fires, which are worsening as the world gets hotter, yet U.S. Forest Service timber sales stayed relatively flat under his tenure.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins did not mention climate change in Friday’s directive, which called on her staff to speed up environmental reviews.
It exempts affected forests from an objection process that allows outside groups, tribes and local governments to challenge logging proposals at the administrative level before they are finalized. It also narrows the number of alternatives federal officials can consider when weighing logging projects.
Logging projects are routinely contested by conservation groups, both at the administrative level and in court, which can drag out the approval process for years.