The whole wildfire/fuel treatment concern has changed the old Timber Wars discussion (at least in California, where wildfire is front and center). People and groups outside our “usual suspects” have been asking questions. And they raise some of the concerns I’ve had since TSW was initiated.. only they write better and have a larger and more diverse audience.
From this piece.. The Environmentalists Making Forest Fires Worse, and Howe the Fix our Forests Act Can Stop Them By Alex Smith and Elizabeth McCarthy of Breakthrough.
*****************************
To combat wildfires before they happen, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), county conservation boards, and other stakeholders implement fuels reduction projects that can reduce excess dry wood and shrubs, and clear smaller vegetation that allows fires to grow faster and reach into the canopy of forests. Fuels reduction approaches like mechanical thinning and prescribed burns have proven to be effective mitigation strategies to reduce the damage from wildfires on ecosystems and to help firefighters stop fires. Yet, a small but loud environmentalist minority opposes fuels reduction, instead claiming that California’s forests must be left untouched. They use outdated environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and National Forest Management Act in courts to delay, and sometimes cancel, projects that would mitigate the wildfires that destroy the ecosystems they claim to protect, and threaten tens of thousands of lives.
During the period that about a sixth of California’s forests were going up in flames, one single group was busy suing the USFS 24 times. That group, Conservation Congress, was responsible for just under two fifths of the USFS’s NEPA-related lawsuits that were decided in federal circuit or appeals courts in California from 2010 to 2024, and spent $2 million on those lawsuits and 5 more in other western States.
What’s most remarkable about Conservation Congress is not their ability to single-handedly hamstring dozens of USFS projects, but that they are, in fact, single-handed: the organization effectively is just one person: Denise Boggs of Great Falls, Montana.
A long-time forest activist and veteran of the California “timber wars,” Boggs has taken the USFS to the mat on countless occasions, often coming up the loser. But she is determined. Boggs believes that the USFS, in bed with logging companies, is using fuels reduction programs and other fire management to create “loopholes big enough to drive logging trucks through.” It is Bogg’s mission to close those loopholes and save the northern spotted owl.
But the problem here is not Boggs, per se. The problem lies in a system that allows a single person to make decisions that reverberate and impact millions of people and millions of acres of our natural resources and ecosystems. Boggs may seem like an outlier—few individuals might have as large an impact on forest permitting, or any other form of NEPA litigation—but the fact that U.S. environmental law can allow for such undemocratic processes and excesses is indicative of the system’s inability to rationally protect the environment.
The Tyranny of the Non-Profits
In fact, Conservation Congress is not an outlier. There are plenty of organizations that wield outsized, undemocratic influence over how the federal government can act. From 2010-2024, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD)—an organization based in Tucson, Arizona with just over a $30 million budget and more than 100 staff members—and the Sierra Club—based in Oakland, California with a budget over $170 million and more than 700 staff members—were responsible for a quarter of all NEPA-related litigation decided in district and appellate courts. These groups are large and well-funded, able to spend millions of dollars litigating projects while simultaneously lobbying federal agencies in Washington, D.C.
When looking at forest management, specifically, groups like Conservation Congress—few employees, with smaller budgets, but with the capacity to delay or outright stop important projects—stand out. Alliance for the Wild Rockies—an organization with few employees and variable funding that sits well below half a million dollars per year—filed 84 suits against forest management projects from 2010 to 2024, or roughly 27% of all forest management NEPA cases in that period. Native Ecosystems Council—similarly small in staff and budget—filed another 53 suits. Collectively, these three organizations were responsible for just over half of all forest management suits during that period.
These are, by definition, special interest groups. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club are national non-profits that advocate for and act on behalf of a specific ideological framework that places the abstract entity of “the environment” over all else. While the Sierra Club has a much longer history—the organization was founded in 1892 by legendary environmentalist and conservationist John Muir—the rest of these non-profits are relatively new projects. CBD was founded in the 1990s by a group of northern spotted owl biologists who sought to protect the species at all costs. Conservation Congress, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and Native Ecosystems Council are all post-turn-of-the-21st-century organizations founded by activists who grew up—ideologically speaking—during the environmental protests of the late 20th century. With the exception of the Sierra Club, which has grown beyond just conservation and preservation, these groups are single-issue groups—protect endangered species, no matter their niche, or lack thereof, and ignore everything else.
Through NEPA litigation, these groups are able to wield outsized power, and curb federal projects—which often have support from local stakeholders—in the name of protecting toads, owls, and more. Their litigation delays, and, in some cases, forces agencies to cancel, projects that would have serious benefits, without even the semblance of a democratic process. The USFS, on the other hand, at least has democratic oversight from elected officials at the federal level. And the local groups working with the federal agency—like county conservation districts, municipal works programs, and more—are directed by elected officials put into office by local elections.
Who agreed to let Denise Boggs, Michael Garrity of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and Sara Johnson of Native Ecosystems Council decide how our forests should be managed, what species are preserved over others, and what works or does not work when it comes to fire management?
**********
And are courtrooms the best place to determine best land management practices? In my experience, no. We have been discussing this question here since 2010..I think it’s interesting to note the difference between how Martin Nie framed the issue (regulatory enforcement, in his usual very well-written way) compared to others (who has the right to decide, and what is the best place to resolve controversies). I still don’t know why pilots to resolve issues via other conflict resolution approaches than litigation (e.g.,mediation, arbitration) have been removed from bills. Then there’s the gendered aspect of litigation, that I wrote about in 2019.
We disagree about projects. We disagree about practices on projects. We disagree about trade-offs. We can also disagree about the best practices for conflict resolution, it seems to me.
Breakthrough Institute is run by billionare venture capitalists and oil execs back east who forgot to check their map of California. (check their donors online) Conservation Congress (the supposed boggeywoman causing all the fires) brings lawsuits in the Pafic Northwest (6Rivers, Mendocino) that have nothing to do with the fires in LA 1,000 miles to the south. They are using a cheap rage-bait game to get rid of our public lands protections on behalf of who? Not the public, and not locals. The public has a right to weigh in on how their public lands are managed. That’s what NEPA does. The Breakthrough Institute has 22 staff and long funder list with a pro-nuclear, anti-envionmental protection agenda. These are East Coast billionares trying to get rid of environmental laws in California. Offshore drilling and nuclear plants with no environmental review, wouldn’t that be nice? No thanks.
While lawsuits against salvage projects are still commonplace, I haven’t seen a whole lot of litigation against thinning projects in the Sierra Nevada. The few lawsuits (against thinning) in the courts, over the decades, have not been very successful. The problem has been the “pace and scale” of those projects. More blame should be applied to the funding of such projects.
I’m also not a fan of any scheme of ‘digital timbermarking’. How can a citizen decide to support or oppose a timber sale, when one cannot even see which individual trees are proposed for removal? Supplying satellite coordinates is not the way to do that.
IMO, the Black Hills National Forest is broken because there aren’t and haven’t been enough litigators to keep Neiman Enterprises in check.
100% true Larry! There hasn’t been a lawsuit on the Black Hills National Forest since 2011. I scratch my head when I hear how lawsuits are a scourge on the Forest Service doing fuel reduction projects. I certainly don’t see that as an issue here, but I realize other places have a different situation. For mere mortals that are not part of an NGO, it is extremely difficult and costly to bring a lawsuit.
I went to the Black Hills NF back in the 90s when the FS was revising its forest plan. Two other conservationists attended as well. We were to meet with the Sierra Club at the local library in Rapid City. The FS told the loggers about our meeting. Industry gave them a paid day off to attend. 700 angry loggers showed up (all we wanted to do was talk about the forest plan), and the meeting was moved to a hotel ballroom complete with police. One of the conservationists was talking into a microphone and a logger came up and snatched it out of her hands and ripped it out of its socket. We had to have police escorts when we left. I know a woman who used to sue the BHNF because she was born in SD and loved the forest. But the loggers who work there are maniacs who will kill you if you speak out against what they are doing. The BH NF is the poster child for lawless logging. It doesn’t even resemble a natural forest. Looks like a tree farm where you can sweep between the rows. It is criminal what the FS has done there.
Wow! I have never heard that story before! I moved here in 2011 to work on the Black Hills NF. I was the Natural Resource Staff Officer and the timber program was one of my program areas. In my career, I worked on 10 different Forests. I must say that the timber industry here is like no other place that I have worked. Timber sustainability has been thrown to the wind in the interest of keeping the mills going at the levels they demand. I am not sure if another Forest has ever cut itself out of a timber program but that is where we are headed here. Acts of Congress such as the NFMA make little difference if they are not followed.
When it comes to the Black Hills NF, let’s not forget that the Forest Service entered into a “stewardship” contract with the National Wild Turkey Federation in late 2022. The Forest Service is paying NWTF 50 million of our tax dollars to cut national forest logs (aka “hazardous fuels”) in California and ship them by rail to Wyoming and South Dakota. Why? To subsidize local sawmills that are running out of timber because Black Hills National Forest has been overcut.
You are correct! This particular operation should go down as one of the dumbest things to occur in FS history! This happened under the Biden Administration and Chief Moore. Logs were cut on the Klamath NF and then trucked to the Neiman mill in Gilchrist, OR where they were debarked (so that bugs would not be transported to WY) and then hauled to a railhead, where they were transported by train to Upton, WY and then truck hauled to the mill in Hulett, WY. Most of this was at taxpayer expense! This finally became controversial when it was exposed that Region 3 was looking at the same arrangement for logs in Arizona going to Wyoming. Other mill operators in AZ complained (rightfully so) and that probably played a role in this fiasco coming to an end. From what I know, this whole rail transport thing has ended. I have heard though, that the FS is subsidizing truck hauling in some areas. Not sure of the extent of that or how it works.
Since when is making a federal agency obey federal laws “undemocratic”? Judges throw out frivolous lawsuits. We only win if we can prove the FS broke the law and the deck is stacked on the FS side. The FS is a serial lawbreaker filled with either incompetent people or people who knowingly thumb their nose at the law. I won’t apologize for my work. The FS has butchered our National Forests and you don’t have to be any kind of natural resource expert to see it. Commercial logging has resulted in less diversity, drying out the land and soil, increasing wind speed and yes – increasing the speed of fires. The wildfire that hit Paradise, CA was holding in the Plumas until it hit a clear cut and raced thru the area like a tsunami burning down the town. The photos show the trees in town didn’t burn, just the structures. The FS knows the science and refuses to use it. Home hardening will protect homes – not logging miles away from towns in the backcountry. Thank the gods for the likes of Conservation Congress, AWR and Native Ecosystems Council. I wish their were millions more like us that believed in protecting public lands owned by the American people from criminal agencies.
Amen! and THANK YOU!!
That fire burned through many kinds of forests, under multiple landowners. The most flammable vegetation/fuels were within previously burned zones. You could even see the outlines of the completely-consumed fallen tree trunks that were vaporized during the fire. We’ve also seen where even SPI’s clearcuts didn’t stop the fire, either. Nothing stops a fire with 70 MPH wind gusts behind it.
You are absolutely correct Sam. I’ve been telling the FS that for 10 years, plus they have the science from virtually everyone, yet they still claim logging prevents or lessens wildfire. It’s a big fat lie. I know it, you know it and they know it. But they have hitched their cart to the timber industry and the truth be damned.
I have to say I’m surprised and pleased with this discussion. Amazed Sharon and the timber beasts aren’t here arguing for more logging and defending the FS. That’s usually the way this platform goes. I appreciate everyone sharing their experiences.
Commercial thinning projects DO reduce fire intensities and resilience to drought, bark beetles and wildfires. Whole tree yarding removes most of the logging slash, too. Hazard trees get cut, and roads are maintained. These are just some of the benefits of Forest Service logging in the Sierra Nevada.
We will have to agree to disagree on this one. Removing trees because of beetle kill also removes the trees that are the most resistant and therefore should not be removed. There is also evidence that logging has actually spread beetles from one area to another. Regardless, beetles are nature’s way of natural thinning of the forest. It’s a natural process. Thinning dries out the forest and does not help with drought. Lush forests retain water. Nothing will stop a wildfire under the right climate conditions and we are in the midst of a warming climate. Forests survived for millinea without “management” and looked a lot better than they do today. The only reason to cut trees is for lumber. Over 90% of timber supplies are provided from private lands. We throw away enough timber into landfills from construction every year to provide 35% of our needs if we would recycle that wood. We don’t need to log national forests.
Have you ever seen, in person, a thinning unit where the average cut tree was 14.5 inches dbh, where no old growth was cut, and where slash was cleaned up and canopy cover was still very good? Species composition is improved and forest structures are enhanced, for endangered species. (At least, in the thinning projects that I worked on.)
Most people do not want to see their public forests die, rot and burn. Yes, there are site-specific compromises available.
No. I’ve seen thousands of units but never with a DBH of 14.5” The FS would never do such a project. Where I work they refuse to have diameter limits and cut the largest trees available. Slash is rarely if ever cleaned up.
I, personally, worked on such a project. EVERY Sierra Nevada National Forest cannot cut trees over 30 inches in diameter, unless they are hazardous/unstable. Most of the trees that were cut were in the 10-18 inch diameter range. Most of those were highly flammable white fir, in the understory. Those were skid to the landings, branches and all.
The finished product actually served as part of the Caldor Fire boundary. A small slopover was controlled inside the cutting units. That would not have happened before the thinning project. Another major Sierra Nevada watershed would have been burned at high intensity.
It sounds like, according to Sam, that the Sierra Nevada National Forests are much different than the Region 1 National Forests. Here, in Bitterroot National Forest, there is never a diameter limit. Canopy cover is never preserved because they must “reduce the hazard of wildfire spreading through the canopy”, even though their own maps show no commercial cutting units that have any potential for active crown fire. Old growth is cut but they claim it is not old growth without even doing a stand exam. Roads are only maintained until the log haul is done, then they revert to their former gullied state, shedding sediment into trout streams and becoming nearly impassible to vehicles. Road closures are ineffective, so illegal motorized use is rampant. Reclamation work, like removing culverts, recontouring and closing temp roads, reclaiming the giant slash burn piles along roads and trails, and mitigating the influx of invasive weeds, are generally not done. Post-project monitoring? No way–it’s subject to funding which somehow never appears. Non-commercial work, probably the most important part of a “restoration project”, is often incomplete, but the commercial portion is always completed. Their so-called “prescribed burns” that they compare to indigenous burning, are not broadcast burns; most are slash pile burns, and many are done without regard to whether or not atmospheric conditions will help smoke dispersion–usually not, and the residents end up choking on smoke for an extra couple months a year. The FS lies to the public on field trips and they provide misinformation to the news media, which most dutifully repeat. And now they are not even taking public comment or even giving public notification of CEs which can be, and often are, large logging projects. Sorry, but my trust in the FS is at absolute zero. The only thing that matters to the FS is meeting their timber targets, which, of course, have been increased even more.
Jake, I went to the Bitterroot site and it looks like they have an email list to sign up for notifications. CE’s have been traditionally scoped. Here’s my question, are you saying that they are not scoping current projects? It would be helpful if you would talk about specific projects. Thanks!
I and others signed up for notifications, but we have gotten nothing. West Fork District Ranger Dan Pliley stated in a Ravalli County Collaborative meeting (2-9-2026) that neither a public comment period nor even public notification (that means no scoping) would occur for two 47d CEs with large commercial harvest components until the ROD is signed. These are the Coal Creek and Slate-Little Boulder projects. They are not listed on the SOPA page, the BNF projects page, or Pinyon either. I think there is also a proposal to expand the Lost Trail Ski Area wholly on national forest land, but we cannot find any information about that, either. For the enormous Bitterroot Front project, a CBA and EAD project, they scoped, but since then no information has been available except they provided information to and ran a field trip for selected contractors without making that available to the public. We found this info by chance on SAM.gov, where it also stated that they would announce RFPs before the Bitterroot Front ROD so they would have a contract in place as soon as the decision is signed. I’ll also add that BNF refuses to communicate any of this info to their original collaborative, the Bitterroot Forest Collaborative, for reasons I have given in another post to this site.
Wolves make the deer herd stronger. Instead of whining about litigants at IDT meetings and then leaving the same weaknesses in NEPA documents the agency should listen and learn from the NGOs and better plan projects to preempt their concerns. The answer isn’t removing or defanging the wolves. The answer is right sizing projects to balance agency staffing and expertise against the litigious environment the agency operates in. Or fill vacancies among the ologists so that the agency produces products that are stronger and less vulnerable to litigation – do more with more.
“They use outdated environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and National Forest Management Act in courts to delay, and sometimes cancel, projects that would mitigate the wildfires that destroy the ecosystems they claim to protect, and threaten tens of thousands of lives.”
Really, all of these laws are outdated? I would agree that they could probably use some tinkering, some more than others but with our current dysfunctional government, does anyone think that is possible? There is no way that our current congress could come up with something like NFMA or these other laws.
I would suggest that all of these laws are the only thing that has stood in the way of wreaking total havoc on our public lands. Is there a database that shows where all of these lawsuits are happening? Is it across the board, pretty much on all National Forests or is it more concentrated in a few areas?
Here is a question that I have, with the rampant use of Emergency Action Determination, are Objections even a thing anymore? Objections on CE’s have not been a thing for some time. Now with EAD, they are not allowed on EA’s and EIS’s (not sure about EIS’s, but I think so). So, if you have a problem with a proposed project, you get one chance to comment. It is then up to the Forest Service what they do with your comment, if anything. They may address it in their final EA/DN or EIS/ROD, or they may not. There is simply no recourse if they simply ignore it or do a poor job of addressing the issue. Actually, there is one recourse, and that would be to file a lawsuit if you have the resources and wherewithal to do that.
I would really like to see the stats of how many projects in the last year or two have been covered by Emergency Action Determination. I am going to guess that it is a majority. Maybe some lawsuits could be prevented if the Forest Service did a better job at resolving issues during the objection process.
You are absolutely correct – in the IPNF almost all logging project have been categorized under CEs or EADs – clearly with the intent of cutting out public participation in the process, which is “undemocratic” as it gets.
The memo, section 40807 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), designates 112,646,000 acres – 59% of all NFS lands – as an “emergency situation.”
Brings to mind the phrase “When everything is an emergency, nothing is.”
EADs cover well over one million acres at this point maybe two million. The FS claims it provides transparency but they lie thru their teeth. I used to work with the FS as a wildlife biologist for another agency. The agency has changed and it is broken. I would support eliminating the agency and putting it under DOI. Not perfect but nothing works well in the FS any more.
Under new regs the FS doesn’t have to take any public comment on CEs. The Mendocino NF isn’t. All their projects are in designated critical habitat for NSO. That’s where they get their timber. CHU is NOT for commercial timber purposes but tell the FS that. No comment, no objections – transparency? I’ve sued them 4 times and won every time. Like I said, incompetence or nose thumbing at the law.
Bitterroot NF is also proceeding with CE commercial logging projects without taking public comment or even notifying the public until after a decision is signed. So, what other recourse is there, other than litigation? These are CE 47d projects, which require that they “be developed or refined through a collaborative process that includes multiple interested persons representing diverse interests”. Bitterroot NF suspended all communication with their original collaborative group, the Bitterroot Forest Collaborative, because BFC was not submissive enough and would actually ask for changes in projects. How dare they! Instead, a more compliant collaborative group was formed, the Ravalli County Collaborative, and Bitterroot NF is now trying to use them to get past the CE 47d rule rather than opening up public comment and public collaboration. Talk about an undemocratic system where only a few get to make the decisions for lands that belong to all Americans!
The very same is true on the Shasta-Trinity, Mendocino and Six Rivers NFs in N CA, and the Modoc in NE CA.
As I asked Jake, are you saying.. 1. You are not getting info on projects? 2. CE projects are not being scoped currently? 3. There is no diameter limit on fuel reduction projects? Please be more specific, also if you could point to specific projects you have observed that would be helpful for us to understand what you mean.
The Mendocino NF is not sending out scoping on the Elder Creek Rest. Project or the Parramore project. Both are CEs in designated critical habitat for the Northern spotted owl.
That’s very helpful. I’ll check into it.
Correct, on Bitterroot NF, we are not getting info on projects. CE projects are not being scoped and there is not even any public notification until after a decision is signed–includes Coal Creek CE, Slate-Little Boulder CE, and probably others. Details are in another post above. No commercial projects in the past 10 years have had any diameter limits. Diameter limits have been asked for on almost all projects, but BNF refused. Much of what I know comes from before-after examination of Bitterroot NF’s Westside project (2016-2018), which I know intimately. I have written several reports on the outcomes of that project, submitted them to BNF for inclusion in active project files, and would be happy to send them to anybody else interested.
Or… investment the money to purchase and maintain a 21st century fleet of strategically placed high tech firefighting aircraft that can be quickly mobilized to nip fires in the Bud. By the time a fire camp is organized it’s usually too late to do anything meaningful. Military aircraft could also be a huge help.
And yes … it’s so easy and convenient to blame Environmental groups, while ignoring climate change.
Also – and this is perhaps my most important point – considering that something like 90% of fires are human caused, we should be permanently closing thousands of miles of forest roads, AND when fire danger begins creeping above the MODERATE level we should be implementing widespread forest road closures. I can’t think of a more simple, and economical way to reduce our annual expenditures on wildland fires.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts on my public lands.
Very good idea!! Close the forest when fire danger rises. Turn the fire fighters into enforcement officers to guard the gates and block illegal trials all the ORV, razors, dirt and E- bikes are wreakreating on. Watch them get their panties in a bundle. 👍🤣
The lack of diversity in the West Coast temperate forest is a cause and effect issue. Low elevation land was converted to private land, logged and then sold to subsistence farmers who were the agrarian pioneers. And then the terrain got more vertical, steeper hillsides, and logged and sold, but the land would not support a family. Great Depression. FDR has USFS, Interior, purchasing failing farms. Paying families to move to town. Counties were foreclosing for unpaid property taxes. Speculation timber owners were also foreclosed on. WWII. No access to get logs to mills for the war effort from the USFS “timber reserves” which was their raison d’être, why we have public land ownership. Unsustainable war effort lumber production. Federal promise was to build roads and sell timber from federal land post war to replace private timber cut unsustainably for the War Dept. That created a mill system without fee simple timberland to support the mill. 40 years later, the roads built, the conversion systems sending lumber to build affordable housing. Enter the serial NGO litigation. Legal scholars became judge forester, judge biologist, judge preservationist, and the slog tied up capital. Americans can’t tolerate economic success and domestic peace. Clinton NW Forest Plan. 10 years later no federal timber dependent mills. Survivors had fee simple second growth. Plus purchased logs in a less competitive market. Mega Huge timberland owners liquidated their old, original, growth timber and sold it off shore, and were prevented by law from buying USFS, BLM timber sales. But Holy Moley, Captain Ajax, they coined money! Were suddenly awash in money. Pulp and paper became a liability in an import economy with recycled packaging for raw materials to pulping. Fine paper disappeared into digital photos on phone and memory sticks. Weyco sold its entire pulp and paper division to IP, and IP shut down the Kraft brown liner board mills, razed them, and wood chips had to find new homes. Weyerhaeuser bought land. “Merged” with PLUM CREEK, also buying forest lands. Sawdust from the production small log mills had to be hauled and dumped. Now it is bedding for livestock, planting material for plant nurseries.
The “enemy” timber barons with environmental assistance got rid of the public timber lumber in the market place, and with export logs and the best market for domestic logs ever, ended up on top. All the years of hating Weyerhaeuser only grew their fortunes and economic standing. And the collateral damage was a few hundred small, non corporate small business sawmills, their logging contractors and a couple hundred thousand family wage jobs now lost forever. The birth rate under 2 per family grows exponentially lower. No girls being born quickly reduces environmental crises.
The available private timber is sold by the REIT timberland owners as logs. All based on the existing mill capacity meeting the REIT need to sell timber at a set volume; at a set time. The greatest existential threat to the whole private land wood products industry? Fire from federal roadless, Wilderness, unsalvage logged burn scars and re-burns that just “slop over” to burn any adjacent private lands with ZERO USFS tort liability. That begat no fire insurance coverage for private timberlands and small acreage home owners based on the federal land track record for the fire from federal lands. Every acre that is consumed by fire from federal land is a loss, and 40 years to recover normalcy, but 40 years of loss to get to recovery.
So a Trump administration can say the USFS and Interior can cut more timber. Where are they gong to sell it? To whom? Lucy Brown feds will never let the Charlies kick that ball. Lucy has no kids. Nor does Charlie Brown. And I am sitting here in a temperate timber zone that managed site 2 can grow timber in less than 40 years and no issue whether they replant. The issue is what happens after site prep and brown out herbicide pre plant and post plant with a herbicide that kills broad leaf and grass but not conifer seedlings. There is so little private timberland in a state 60% owned by “the people” of the USA. “In God we trust.” Federal and state governments? No way! No “next times.” That congressional clown car show and “rope a dope” fool-ya- every- time serial liars in Congress have but one outlier in the Senate, Fetterman (D) PA. Maybe a handful in the House. In my dotage, I can’t stand fiction and drama, so watch the contrived “nature shows,” one of which is the US House in committee sessions. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between the Committee members and the rear view of donors at the Premarin farm. Note: you must go to Canada to see that sight. And up there, locals will say it looks like Parliament, “Eh.”
The only reason I can conjure for “Where are the sawmills to cut more federal timber?” is easily answered if you have the time to watch a week of the US House in action on C-SPAN or wherever. Those people created the impossible arena in which the USFS, Interior, must operate as best they might. My life experience is the USFS has its share of folks who would better serve the country in retirement. My selective memory only remembers the ones who were a treat to work with. And that a fond memory.
The mills that convert the small logs to dimension timber to frame home construction cost a half a billion dollars to build the capacity it takes to justify the high tech recovery machinery and electronics, hard and soft ware, with minimal waste which now has little or no market. The latest mills, several being built in the Southern Pine regions, will allow ONLY machine produced logs, processor bucked at precise lengths. The high speed one direction path of the end dogged log through the thin kerf band saws to the automatic green chain that stickers the lumber for kiln drying cannot change an offset end causing the piece to cause a jam up and rodeo. Result: thousands of small timberland owners not longer can log their own land. Machinery cost for a processor and forwarder cannot be supported by land once logged by chain saw and skidder logging to contract loader and trucking outfits. Sea change. Same issue and outcome as small sawmills using federal timber. Under capitalized. Not acres enough to compete. The industry adapted to the raw material base and the evolving AI and machine learning to produce more lumber from the same weight of logs and the capacity provides the lowest cost lumber back to the stump.
You can manage a sawmill by weight of raw logs delivered daily, the weight of waste hauled off, the weight of green lumber to kilns, dry lumber to grading and planing. And weight of lumber sold and hauled away. All are conservation of matter. AI can keep track of every aspect and report daily or hourly.
You cannot run a deal like that two shifts a day, five days a week. The most modern and efficient mills are constructed and managed to run 24-7, 10 hour days, two shifts a day, 4 @ days and then 3 days of longer shifts for Friday-Sunday.
A bazillion pieces going through the mill on a one way trip with no jams, back up, all going one way from the log truck to the lumber truck or A frame rail car. There is just no way for that industry to deal with, depend on, live with, the absolutely bolloxed daily in courts and the totality of the federal public lands process to think they can sell timber. The “goal posts” are on an eccentric base, able to rise and drop at random while running in a circular pass, around and around at variable speed, all operated by AI and constantly changing rules and numbers. The kicker faces the 11 fastest, tallest, most heavy and strong players being paid millions, with the goal to overpower the kickers’ 10 protectors. 11 vs 9 (holder and kicker). As it stands today and has for the last 38 years, the “federal forest reserves” are purposefully used as “fuel reserves” to burn their way to Stone Age natural forests. Interglacial period heating is exacerbating the process. Industry knows and understands, thus has no need for federal timber and the inherent potholes and disruptions that come with that dependence.
A front came through the Valley today, ambient temperature 41 F at 350 ft elevation. Monsoonal rain for ten minutes. That will be snow at 3500 feet where the accumulation is zero. At 4500 ft and accumulation is 14″. I think this is the weather year that historically produced the landscape stand removal fires in the Coast Range. The Oregon Coast Range is a two mile strip of private land in ownerships under 500 acres, and primarily developed lots with “beach homes” and small business. From the high tide line to a mile or two inland, and then timberlands in ownerships of 1000 acres or more, private and government, all the way to the ag lands in the foothills of the interior north-south valleys. Fewer than ten sawmills or veneer plants on that land from the littoral to private, state and federal timberlands in ownerships of 5000 acres or more. 300 miles from CA to WA. All of it in various stages of seral succession. USFS sells only thinning on prior logged and replanted acres. No original stands. Planted and natural reproduction from stand removal fires in the 19th century and the then logged over lands replanted. Some are growing third growth since 1900. Early Oregon was built on pilings and pole with piling trestles, bridges, telegraph, phone and then power poles.
Young growth timber was essential to getting “old growth” to the mill and lumber to markets. River and marine docks built on pilings. Now only a handful of mills are capable of cutting logs 4 feet in diameter. industry runs on logs less than 22″ on the butt end. Oversize logs and timber is available due to GPS monument location development and second and third growth logging removing the odd corners and property line trees both sides of the line where is was before GPS, and owners unsure of what was whose. Those days a going away.
When the feds killed the timber sales, they also killed “in lieu” revenue sharing. 25% of the USFS gross revenue went to the county of origin. The population is three fold of what it was post WWII. The in lieu money dried up after 1990. Earlier in this week I was at a county commissioners hearing about closing the county fairgrounds due to no in lieu money and property taxes capped. Timber companies finance a “Forest Deputy” to deal with criminal activity on private timberlands. Tribal leaders pay for a deputy to patrol indian land and the hotel/casino complex. Many Oregon counties do not have the tax base to deal with lost or missing persons on public lands. The US government searches for nobody. Sheriff’s job. Now no deputy to patrol county roads through the federal lands. Some have no deputy nor a State Police patrol for 24 hour coverage county wide. And no hope for that to change.
Pogo said that he had met the enemy “and it is us.” I will define that more succinctly: The Tyrannical Urban majority is “us”. Population is greatest where the government owns the least land. A million and a half persons in the Portland tri-county area. Salem is the Capitol and is only adding apartment complexes on farmland. Homeless are endemic with free food and squatter camping. The Salem micro newspaper announced the teen mental health NGO ran out of money and is closing down. State is broke. Years of far left riots and property destruction drove customers from inner city, and with them property values dropped like a New Years ball in NYC. Office space is 45% empty in downtown Portland. High rise office building bought for over $80 million just before Covid sold for $15 million in late 2025. Incomes are mobile. Taxation has to stay in state. USFS folks hate Oregon assignments: state income taxes. High cost housing. Diminishing services. 3rd from bottom K-12 achievement. And it all started when the USFS and BLM stopped selling timber. In the interim, more has burned annually, and not salvaged, than was being logged annually in the past. It was “trickle up” economic decline. The bankers in Portland left. Insurance left. Then insurance companies bought vast areas of timberlands too young to log. Hancock. Then the “iron” dealers and OEM manufactures shut down. Even the big time disposal auction outfits have left for the MidWest and Texas. Law firms have fewer lawyers. Hospitals are going broke.
The guy with the coffee kiosk in Idahana, where once there was a sawmill that cut seriously shook and Indian paint rot logs, defective hemlock, and made lots of wood chips for newsprint pulp mills and a veneer company serving layup lines down valley, said to a Portland reporter who stopped for coffee on his way to Sisters and Bend, and asked the kiosk owner: “How are things here now?” The reply was classic rural West: “Well, things are so bad the meth heads had to move to Portland as there was nothing left here to steal.” And that was 20 years before the Labor Day 2020 North Santiam fire from lightning fire in early August being used as “prescribed fire to remove fuels” in the Warm Spring Rez on the east side of the Cascades summit. Lionshead fire. The Arctic early fall equinox cold high pressure arrived, with it gale force east wind and instantly the multiple controlled fires blew embers a mile or more into the “Jeff” Wilderness to the West, over the summit and down the river and Devils creek and the existing “watched” one tree fire in Opal Creek Wilderness that in three weeks had grown to about 500 acres attracted the high pressure with its heat low and really blew up and all the Wilderness burned and burned into the Mt Hood NF Bull of the Woods Wilderness, and soon was on the Cascades foothills of the Willamette Valley in Marion and Clackamas counties, on the outskirts of Scott’s Mills, and towards the Mollala and south fork Clackamas rivers. Wilderness gift to 200,00 acres of private timberland? All trees killed. Also 8 people. Hundreds of homes, several dozen businesses. Plus the 300,000 federal acres of burn scars in the Rez, Wilderness, and roadless and green timberlands the fires raced through, killing timber, young and old One company sued the USFS for never manning the one tree Beechie Fire in the Opal Wilderness. Case dismissed. FTCA and Supremacy Clause.
Judge essentially said the USFS has vast experience, you don’t. Evidently a century of owning the timberlands only burnt in 2020 makes a citizen irrelevant. We heard that when the same judge dismissed a homicide charge against a DEA agent who ran a stop light, killing a cyclist, while following a suspected drug dealer. Case dismissed. Supremacy clause.
The above is reality from the view of the private side of the purchase of federal timber to house America. Sadly, selling “more timber” is classic Gertrude Stein: “There is no there, there.” She was describing Stockton, CA. Me describing Region 6, USFS markets for logs. Too many lenders were hurt by Bill Clinton and his Jack Ward Thomas narrow slice of experience and management. Capital can work with Weyerhaeuser. Hancock. Hedge fund investors. But Capital cannot trust Capitols and their regulatory morass. Lucy has Charlie Brown. USFS lost their ball, and their way, albeit not their “fault.” Extremes produce hot buckets of feces and there are no takers. Federal land covering more than half my state now is an annual threat to private land and the local economy. A cancer. The real issue is federal fuel and fire gaslighting has turned the USFS into a blight of its own. Obviously the fire issue only grows and nobody in government has the ability to act to diminish the threat of fire harming our civilians and all they have. “Helpless and hopeless” outcomes, impacts , harm the trust needed to have good governance.
It is telling that the first photo and paragraph in the linked article are of the recent LA fires. Those fires had nothing to do with timber, NEPA, ESA, or NFMA, and were not forest fires. The brush fire issues in SoCal and the Bay Area will only be fixed through home hardening and smart rebuilding, which, ironically will require more regulations, not fewer. The author has no clue what they are writing about, except that they came to write about how regulations are bad by over simplifying a very complex situation.
I recently read Jack Ward Thomas’ “The Journals of a Forest Service Chief”. I was a big fan of many of his actions but was sad to see his complaints about suits by Environmental NGOs. This was surprising, for if it wasn’t for these NGOs there likely would have been no need for the Northwest Forest Plan. It’s nice to see that 30 years later we are still making the same argument. I agree that there is a need for regulatory change, but the Republicans and Democrats can’t agree what that is. So until then, the Forest Service is stuck following the rules it has rather than the ones it wished it could have.
The Breakthrough Institute article cited in “The Tyranny of the NonProfits?” uses the delay of a fuels project by the court (which the Agency lost) to suggests, “It’s impossible to determine the degree to which the delay of the Smokey Project’s 7000 acres of hazardous fuels reduction meaningfully contributed to the August Complex Fire. But, by delaying the project for years, Conservation Congress likely did more damage to the natural habitat of the Northern Spotted Owl than any amount of Forest Service intervention could have.” Using a similar line of logic then the Forest Service should never undertake prescribed fires or burn piles because these actions led to “The 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire was the largest and most destructive wildfire in the history of New Mexico.” Wikipedia. Or conduct timber sales because the 33,000-acre Yellow Lake Fire, which was the biggest fire in Utah in 2024 was, “accidentally caused by logging equipment” KPCW report.
If the Forest Service was a sports team and we had been complaining about the referees and opponents for 30 years, that coach would have been fired. The paper from the Breakthrough Institute found a 28% loss rate for NEPA. This compares to Fleischman et al. (2020. US Forest Service implementation of the national environmental policy act: Fast, variable, rarely litigated, and declining. Journal of Forestry, 118(4), pp.403-418) which states that; “Of the 241 resolved cases (the others are still outstanding), the USFS won 67 percent, lost 21 percent, and settled 12 percent.” The problem with these numbers is they don’t account for the documents that are withdrawn before going to court. So, the real odds of the Forest Service losing a case is perhaps close to 50:50. And remember all ties go to the Forest Service (we get deference).
The Forest Service is slow even after we get a project through NEPA. Based on past work it takes 406 days to get a Mechanical Fuel Project through NEPA. It then takes 494 days before anything happens on the ground. And finally, treatment begins 356 days after that (Edwards and Sutherland, 2022. https://www.perc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/PERC-PolicyBrief-NEPA-Web.pdf). Many current timber NEPA documents have a 15-year timeframe to implement projects.
Then, after going through all these steps, not everything sells. More than 10% of what the Agency puts up for sale does not sell the first time around (Frey et al. 2024. Development of a framework for understanding unsold timber offerings from the US National Forest System. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 67(2), pp.267-290.)
In conclusion, not many people would give up their right to take someone to court if they thought what they were doing was illegal. While I disagree with many of the environmental NGOs claims, courts are the proper place to argue unresolvable conflicts (see Science at the Bar by Sheila Jasanoff). Many of the people that sue the Forest Service think our actions do little to reduce large scale fires and that harvest after fires is harmful to many species. These arguments have a basis in science.
Finally, it is increasingly difficult to know when projects are being proposed because of changes in the Schedule of Proposed Activities process, that it is becoming harder to object to projects, and the Forest Service’s resistance to adopting the general public’s comments, is it any wonder that this space is being filled by Environmental NGOs lawsuits.
Wow! I didn’t know to step into this snake pit or not, some folks are riled up! One thing is for certain, most commenters have a skewed conception of the National Forest mission and how conservation measures are part of their very existence. Not good, nor bad, just disappointing to see the disconnect.
Dave Mertz is onto something; my short time as FS on the Black Hills was an eyeopening experience. I was lucky enough to see and hear the construct of leaders intent on what was needed to be done from the Regional Office, and then work with the “do-ers” to try and carry out that intent. And as Dave has often surmised, I too have never seen a National Forest “mine” timber! Disgraceful!
I’m a timber beast from way back – back to the mid-1970’s, in both the South and Pacific Northwest. Along my way, I learned the value of the multiple use concept and, AND what conservation looked like. When I left the South (again) in 2010, the Ouachita was cutting 100-150 million board feet per year, and not even keeping up with growth! Too many inexperienced national leaders see that output and think anyone can cut that much and not impune the standing inventory. Outside the South, you can’t!
The disconnect is alive and well…..
Forty five years ago this interested party logged in the Buckhorn and Moskee, Wyoming areas of the Black Hills when it was home to some of the last old-growth ponderosa pine stands in the region. We operated a belt-driven portable sawmill powered by a John Deere tractor on private ground where I cut and skidded some huge bug-killed trees.
In 2020 the State of Wyoming completed the purchase of some 4349 acres of private land surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest near the border with South Dakota in the Grand Canyon area near Moskee in Crook County about seven miles east of Sundance.
It’s home for 63 species of birds, 30 mammals, 8 reptiles, 4 amphibians, 38 plants identified as critters of greatest conservation need and include the northern goshawk, northern pygmy-owl, least weasel, smooth green snake, the threatened northern long-eared bat and black-backed woodpecker. Wyoming is a fence-out state so the parcel is at risk to cattle encroaching from neighboring allotments and private property but Crook County Sheriff Jeff Hodge has refused to ticket the livestock owners who complain the cost of fencing is prohibitive.
Now, extended drought in the region is causing a bump in the number of pine beetles like Dendroctonus ponderosae and Ips pini so Neiman Enterprises has compelled the BHNF to request comment on proposals for commercial logging on 8,000 acres of National Forest System land four miles south of Beulah, WY and on 6,372 acres and fuel treatments on a total of 15,170 acres of NFS land on the South Dakota side of the border.
Recall South Dakota’s lone US Representative Dusty Johnson who sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Cochrane was the sixth different leader in 2023 alone and 11th in the past seven years and the closure of Neiman’s mill in Spearfish is only a matter of time.