Trump Administration Orders More Logging in Los Padres, Other National Forests

U.S. Department of Agriculture Issues Emergency Order to Increase Timber Harvesting Across 113 Million Acres of National Forests

Trump claims that more logging is necessary to curtail the country's reliance on imported timber and treat what he’s diagnosed as a nationwide “forest health crisis.” | Credit: Bryant Baker

It seems President Donald Trump’s promise to “drill, baby, drill” has a twin: “chop, baby, chop.”

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued an emergency order to increase timber harvesting across 113 million acres of national forests, and California is a primary target.

The directive from USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins mandates a 25 percent increase in timber quotas nationwide.

Los Padres National Forest, spanning nearly two million acres across multiple county lines, including Santa Barbara and Ventura, is just one of many California forests that are at risk of being dramatically altered as a result of the directive.

The announcement builds on Trump’s two earlier executive orders in March to expand domestic timber production, including exemptions from standard environmental safeguards.

Trump claims that more logging is necessary to curtail the country’s reliance on imported timber and treat what he’s diagnosed as a nationwide “forest health crisis.”

According to Rollins’s directive, forests are in crisis due to “uncharacteristically severe” wildfires, insect and disease outbreaks, and “other stressors.” (Notably, she did not mention climate change.)

Rollins said that streamlined permitting for increased logging projects will help “to achieve relief from threats to public health and safety, critical infrastructure, and/or mitigation of threats to natural resources…. These actions will improve the durability, resilience, and resistance to fire, insects, and disease within national forests and grasslands across the National Forest System.”

Logging trade groups have applauded the directive, saying that it can bolster the American timber industry, create jobs, and mitigate wildfire risks.

However, environmentalists, including Los Padres ForestWatch, are calling BS. They say that cloaking the order in “wildfire resistance” is to distract from the main goal of increasing profit for the timber industry.

“The order repeats Trump’s assertion — without any factual or scientific basis — that logging can protect communities from wildfire, citing ‘recent disasters’ like the tragic Los Angeles wildfires,” ForestWatch said in a press release. “Increased logging would not have protected these communities because the fires burned primarily in chaparral shrublands and urban areas, not forests.”

The group says Trump’s orders open nearly all of Los Padres to the widespread removal of trees and other native vegetation and could accelerate a massive 235,000 acre logging and vegetation clearing project across the forest.

Forests benefit all Americans, it continues. Mature trees and old growth forests provide clean air and water, opportunities for recreation, habitat, and can help mitigate climate change. The biggest, oldest trees — the most tantalizing to loggers — are also the most resilient to wildfire.

“This is a thinly veiled attempt to ramp up logging on our national forests, bypass environmental laws, and line the pockets of the timber industry,” said ForestWatch Executive Director Jeff Kuyper. He referenced the administration’s gutting of federal agencies, including the recent firings of thousands of Forest Service employees by the Department of Governmental Efficiency.

“This move, coupled with mass firings, budget cuts, and environmental rollbacks, spell disaster for the Los Padres and other national forests across the country.”

The Center for Biological Diversity has vowed to track the directive and pursue the appropriate legal action, said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director.

“This is not careful, thoughtful forest management; it’s about the timber industry and their profits — full stop,” she said.

While there is nothing on the face of the USDA order that they can challenge as of now, she said they will be watching closely as it unfolds. They will likely challenge specific projects on the basis of unwarranted declarations of an emergency, or on behalf of wildlife protected under the Endangered Species Act — such as condors — being illegally killed or their habitat destroyed.

She also mentioned the Trump administration’s doubling down on duties on Canadian lumber, meaning the taxes imposed on our northern neighbor are going to be increased by more than 30 percent, even before Trump imposes more restrictive tariffs.

“We believe their use of emergency authorities under the ESA [Endangered Species Act] will likely be illegal, because you can’t use ESA emergency authority to exploit made-up timber threats, just because Trump doesn’t like Canadian imports of lumber,” she said. “It seems really dubious that one can declare it all an emergency — 112 million acres, that’s almost half the National Forest system — so we’re going to stay on top of it.”