I happened to pick up this post from LinkedIn that looks like it netted many of Trump’s recent executive orders that are most likely to affect federal lands.
(A reminder that Executive Orders and Presidential Memoranda are policy and priority statements and directives to staff from a president that offer interpretation within the limits set by all the laws of the country… all Presidents use them) https://lnkd.in/eTxhxheF
These orders are found here – if you want a document/section reference for something let me know:
https://lnkd.in/euDE8tvR
1. 🫎 Requires the ‘god squad’ under the Endangered Species Act to meet every 3 months and directs the Secretary of Interior to figure out procedures that would allow the committee to complete it’s reviews of every submission within 140 days; this authority has very rarely been used within the last 50 years, but could be used to allow big infrastructure projects to have no, fewer, or different requirements to avoid, minimize, or offset impacts on endangered wildlife and plants.
2. 🌊 Directed the Army Corps to use general permits and emergency procedures under the Clean Water Act far more often and the same for emergency procedures for permitting (or consulting) on projects under the Endangered Species Act.
3. Weirdly revoked President Carter’s executive order on NEPA that told agencies to make environmental impact statements shorter, clearer and more useful to the public; I assume this is because it also gave CEQ direction to issue regulations under NEPA.
4. 🌲 Rescinded the executive order protecting ancient forests across US National Forests and that created a national goal to reforest areas in the US where trees have been lost.
5. 🌵 Rescinded direction for US agencies to expand international work and cooperation to fight deforestation.
6. Rescinded the order that directed the Office of Management and Budget to provide guidance on ecosystem service valuation
7. Rescinded direction to federal agencies to report and act on ways to expand the use of nature-based solutions.
8. Required all agencies to develop action plans to change or eliminate all regulations, orders, guidance, policies, settlements or other actions that hinder or slow down US energy production (except offshore wind energy permitting and leasing which is suspended completely and agencies are directed to add policies to slow down)
9. Suspended about a dozen policies or decisions related to energy production and roads in Alaska.
10. Makes thousands of “policy-influencing” career federal jobs into a new category of employment that is subject to different performance requirements and dismissal if they fail to “faithfully implement” policies of the current president.
Genuinely curious, not trying to troll or stir the pot: For those of you who supported Trump, or who’ve talked about these orders with others who did, is this what you expected / hoped for?
To me, yes. A couple of things though; the speed at which these EO’s have come is pretty staggering and it’s too soon to really tell on how some will play out, as in unintentional consequences. If you watched Hannity last night, you saw a President speak on “scientific forestry”, modern forestry practices. And not just a mention, he spoke for several minutes! Of course he got some of it mixed up but have you EVER heard a President, in the last 100 years anyway, speak on forestry?
As a longer answer to the question, all these intentions were out, and front and center in his campaign. That’s what he ran on and he’s making good on his intentions. We knew what was in the box! I think even I am still shaking my head over the collapse of Joe Biden; who was actually running this country? His promise to not pardon, then pardon, or commute (the final numbers I saw were around 6,500) everyone in his family, during Trumps speech. Apparently, the election proved this country was ready for these intended changes because “Electorally” speaking, it was a blow- out!
So far, so good!
“Of course he got some of it mixed up but have you EVER heard a President, in the last 100 years anyway, speak on forestry?”
We heard Trump talk about raking the forests as a solution to western wildfires, so there’s THAT!
REMEMBER, Republicans have wanted to ‘defund’ the Forest Service for years now, wanting National Forests to be returned to the States. It is quite apparent that Republicans WANT an unfunded ineffective Forest Service that is small enough to be eliminated, altogether. (Of course, they want to keep all the white male firefighters in a new Federal Agency.)
AND, maybe a new Federal firefighting Agency could be named Federal Fire Service, with an acronym of FFS *SMIRK*
Yawn….. The Republican Senators and Congressman/women I’m familiar with do not want the Federal Lands transferred to States, they want them managed more efficiently! We have a Congressman here in Arkansas who is actually a forester. His Bills introduced are tracking right along with sensible actions…. Certainly, the last Administration was a disaster, and their replacement would have been even worse. So, there’s that…..
Biden certainly increased the amount of “boots on the ground”, in the form of firefighters and timber folks. I would expect that there will be increased attrition during this Administration.
Red States want to control what happens in their States. They don’t want to be tied to long-standing Federal cornerstone environmental rules, laws and policies.
Hey, Republicans have the House and the Senate. WHY NOT use proper channels that BOTH Parties are supposed to follow. Just CHANGE the laws (and hope that the courts support your ‘concepts of a plan’.) That is what needs to happen, anyway.
The clock is ticking and you have less than 2 years to ‘do something’ until the next election. Then, (as Trump likes to say), “We’ll see what happens”.
Larry, I’m not sure that that’s true. We don’t really know where all the IRA and BIL funding went or whom exactly was hired. Do you have a cite for the increase in firefighters and timber folks?
The FS hired I think about 4,000 new permanent employees ( of all types – Fuels, Fire, and non-fire) with the glut of WCS/BIL and IRA monies, and Disaster Recovery Act for a few forests in CO and WY. This is the main reason for the budget fiasco currently, which has been echoed by the Chief and various Regional Foresters, and Forest Sups.
In the whole scheme of things, the extra costs above what it costs to hire Temps, is a tiny drop in the Bambi bucket for the budget of the USFS. Remember, Temps generally work ONE HOUR SHORT of what Permanent 13/13 Seasonals work, these days. The worship of the FTE numbers has taken a terrible toll on the Agency, across many Administrations, and through many ‘forest disasters’. I blame the Forest Service leadership of every Administration since 1980. I predict that we’ll be (eventually) going back to using inexperienced Temporaries, under the Trump Administration. To make it easier, will we see “Selective Logging” turn into “Cut the Big Ones”?
Good luck with that. You’ll need it.
Hi Larry: I don’t think industry has the equipment or market demand to “Cut the Big Ones” anymore. With billions and billions of board feet of firekill going unsalvaged, and millions of acres of industrial plantations on public land that have reached merchantable size, there is more than enough backlog to keep thousands of people working for many years. To me, it is sickening what we have done to our public lands, and this mess should be fixed and our forests restored for future generations. This is not what we were given, and it is not right what we are leaving behind.
BOTH Parties MUST take some of the blame. What did Trump do during his first two years, when he had The House AND The Senate? A BIG FAT plant-based “Nothing Burger”. *smirk* He did even less in his second two years. However, he will never live down the raking thing. He is also the guy who considered bombing a hurricane with a nuclear device. Anything about forestry he says at this point is merely ‘comic relief’.
“[B]ut have you EVER heard a President, in the last 100 years anyway, speak on forestry?” I heard President Bill Clinton speak on forestry, for an entire day, during his 1993 Forest Summit. That he visited Portland on my birthday, too, made it especially memorable.
President Biden spoke about forestry and old growth forest conservation on Earth Day 2022 when he issued EO 14072. Not quite Andy’s birthday present, but not bad for government work.
Do you have a link to what he said? I looked around on the internet but couldn’t find it.
There’s a difference; both Biden and Clinton were operating off scripted presentations for new policies, not on a live, nationwide question and answer segment. As for Clinton, the Northwest is still dealing with that disaster and Biden was reading a teleprompter, or a prepared speech….. There is a difference.
Jim Z: I don’t know about Biden, but you’re just wrong about Clinton being scripted. His comments during the Northwest Forest Summit were entirely extemporaneous — I was there. After the conference, I asked his domestic policy advisor how many hours it took to get Clinton up-to-speed on the issues. “Ha,” he said, “We didn’t brief him at all; he just reads everything he can get his hands on.”
Not totally related, but I was working at White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton Admin, taking advantage of every White House perk I could locate. One was taking your family to meet the President at his Saturday radio addresses. I happened to be there for the signing of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (or maybe he didn’t sign it there, but was honoring the folks who worked on it.) He had no notes and my impression was that he was a Wonk Extraordinaire, in addition to his many other notable qualities.
YOU are correct Andy! I misspoke; Clinton is an Arkansas boy who was a pretty good President! Sorry individual, certainly no role model but a good President. His meddling in the NW Forest Plan was pure Clinton, didn’t know the details but made a decision! I was a Democrat back then…..🤣
Well, as long as we are telling Clinton stories.
I was “forest host” for a trip for Russian foresters and they were accompanied by the the highest levels of Forest Service on the trip.
At a field stop, I asked one of them how the White House meeting were organized and how they were managed.
The guy looked up and thought for a minute and answered “kids on sugar”.
They were both “fired” a couple of weeks later.
“If you watched Hannity” … I can think of a lot of smart-ass things to follow this with, but I’ll just say that I hope most of those who follow the Smokey Wire like to get their facts from trustworthy sources.
In reply to Pileated Woodpecker’s question…….
I think one of the casualties of the Republicans moving to a working class, populist party is the death of the “traditional” conservation movement. The Democrats are the party of “woke preservationists” and the management of the public lands under them has that bias.
Yes, I was disappointed in President’s Trumps previous four years. He is an easterner with little interest or knowledge of western issues and follows the working class, populist line of the new Republican party.
Don’t forget that the first National Park President Obama visited was as President of the United States. He like President Trump, deferred to the default position of his supporters.
I like President Trump’s position on Industrial Wind and Solar areas.
I have watched the destruction of almost a million acres in eastern Washington and Oregon effectively destroyed by Industrial Wind Areas for almost NO reason.
I did have BPA send me the daily spreadsheets for power entering the BPA grid from various sources. Industrial Wind Areas on paper have 11% or so of the generating capacity, yet they generate less than 1.4% of the electricity on the BPA grid. For this we destroyed the endangered shrub-steppe ecosystems ??
The second issue is the burning down of our National Forests and public lands. Scroll around and see what we have lost in the last 25 years. If you like me, have worked throughout the west in the last 55 years look up your favorite spots to see if they still exist.
https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=40.20615,-122.74475&z=8&b=mbh&a=fire_recent
This misses the 1990’s. The next 30 to 40 years promises to be much worse, as these areas are reburned and permanently converted to brush. I personally think it is too late to save our National Forests, all we can do is save the iconic areas like the giant sequoia groves. Maybe we can save some local populations of sensitive animal and plant species.
RPA data shows the National Forests in the Rocky Mountain region at below net growth. We are burning down more trees than we are growing. The Pacific coast region will show negative growth in the next revision in my opinion.
I don’t think people, including President Trump understand the destruction of our National Forests through wildfires. In any case, it might be too late.
I don’t see why a populist, working-class political party cannot develop a conservation ethic. BUT, it seems right now there is only a “response” to Democrats without developing a platform of their own.
That to me, this is the disappointment with President Trump.
Larry Harrell, you apparently have never seen “brush rakes” work in the forest setting? The ground is “raked” by a finger-jointed blade that picks up all the brush and piles it for later burning. Hundreds of thousands of acres in the South used the “shear and take” technique (and yes, that’s what it is called) to prep clearcut acres for planting. We used them extensively in the Ponderosa Pine region of Colorado to clean up slash following Mountain Pine Beetle mortality. Once completed, it will not carry fire! Once the grasses come back in it will carry surface fires, but a crown fire in grass is likely be you can just step over….
Search brush rakes; they attach to the blade, or the c-frame on dozers…
I think this is what President Trump was shown in T1….
Being a former Timber Sale Administrator, of course I know what a brush rake is. Yes, they are very useful when all you do is clearcut or overstory removal. You get good burn piles, with a minimum amount of dirt. However, brush rakes aren’t good at all in a forested setting. Tree trunks and roots get damaged. A dozer with a brush rake is overkill in a thinned-from-below stand. It’s better to have feller-bunchers, whole-tree yarding and a de-limb-er, instead. Whatever is left is acceptable, and reduces erosion. If your leave trees have a 22 foot triangular spacing, a dozer with a brush rake is not a great idea. Of course, Trump was talking about hand rakes and piles of leaves.
This discussion reminds me of this BBC piece.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38188074
“Salena Zito, writing in the Atlantic magazine, external, summed up Trump’s election campaign by saying: “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
But can the press really stop taking literally what the president-elect says?
That’s quite a dilemma for the next four years.”
And that piece was in 2016..
You missed one of the biggest advantages of brush blades, salvage and late seral seed tree cleanup and scarification of elk sedge in Washington and Oregon. As a sale administrator, you should have encountered that?
“The right tool, for the right job”
A brush rake really doesn’t have much use in the modern thin-from-below style of active management. The de-limb-er makes a huge pile, and a brush rake might be handy to ‘tidy-up’ the edges. We don’t let them drive up the skid trails.
The key take-away is that Trump wasn’t talking about brush rakes.
AND, about salvage…
I worked on salvage projects in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 (mostly as a Temporary). I know a little something about logging, contracts, salvage, pulpwood, documentation, litigation and extensions. In three different Regions.
A sale administrator as a temporary employee? Really? You must mean harvest inspector? Good operators won’t skin residual trees, certainly not digging root deep, keeps dirt out of the piles, etc.
Back to the question; yes, pleased so far but anxiously awaiting what’s next. I did hear OPM dropped the letter tonight on folks going back into the office – another positive! As Sharon mentioned, the centralization of HR at ASC removed the most experienced employees in that area a, and as she said, mostly women. I personally knew several who told the FS to go pound sand!
There weren’t many things they didn’t let me do in Sale Admin. The financial stuff was done in the office, while I was going out in the field, like every other day. When you write over 95% of all the inspection reports, you’re more than just a “Harvest Inspector”. There are only three things a contract delegates Harvest Inspectors the authority to do. Mark timber. Mark damaged timber. Designate waterbars. I had like three pages of authority delegations. I doubt that there are more than a dozen Permanent Harvest Inspectors in all the Forest Service. Maybe less than ten. It’s rare to see them offered as Temporary positions, too. I’ve done that level of work as a GS-5 before.
Running a dozer with a brush rake on skid trails just isn’t done, in the Sierra Nevada, where wildfires are such an issue. However, Sierra Nevada brushfields are a notorious mix of brush species that are not only impenetrable, but highly flammable, as well. Those places are rarely a part of a timber sale. I’ve seen other kinds of mastication contracts to deal with that kind of project.
Not true under extreme wind and low humidity situations. I personally watched a clearcut treated with such equipment so cleanly that I think you could have planted potatoes! An early winter front on the Lincoln RD, Helena NF, came roaring thru in late October (1964) and turned the clearcut into a roaring fire in a few hours. The ignition source is unclear, probably some tiny hold-over sparks from one of the brush piles. It was raging so strongly that a spooked DFR declared it a “project fire” and organized a crew of over 50 folks, established a fire camp nearby, ordered equipment and food to support all this!! Overnight the crew and camp were covered with several inches of snow. Breaking camp the next day in the snow was so much fun! The district warehouse was very well-supplied for several months.
Point #4, about ancient forest, which EO is that from? I’m not seeing that the old growth EO was rescinded.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/unleashing-american-energy/
This EO revokes the Biden EO that directed the federal agencies to pursue sustainable forest and land management backed by science along with conserving mature and old-growth forests.
“Sec. 4. Revocation of and Revisions to Certain Presidential and Regulatory Actions. (a) The following are revoked and any offices established therein are abolished:
(x) Executive Order 14072 of April 22, 2022 (Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies);
Thank you!
Huh.
And.
Ballots from Helene-damaged areas are among the 65,000 that Republicans want to throw out in North Carolina