Stop Trump’s Destruction of Our National Parks! explains that Eric Hanson shows in the video below the impact for all Americans of Trump’s cuts to the parks. Eric is a freelance journalist, photographer, and filmmaker specializing in outdoor adventure and travel. He is the host of Epic Trails, a TV and digital series designed to showcase the people, places, and adventures that surround the world’s top backpacking trails. Epic Trails airs on Outside TV, Fox Sports networks, WPBS, National Geographic, and Amazon Prime.
Eric is also the host of the popular Backpacking TV YouTube Channel where he shares his adventures on the trail as well as his knowledge and passion for all things hiking and backpacking. Eric has traveled to more than 80 countries. Please call (202) 224-3121 and give them your zip code to connect to your representative. Ask them to oppose Trump’s destruction of our National Forests.
The Real Reason Trump Is Firing Park Rangers
More details surface in Trump administration plan to cut national forests 4/4/25
A bird’s-eye view of the Colville National Forest. Memos from the Trump administration are increasing pressure to cut more national forests for timber and forest health.(Steve Ringman / The Seattle Time, 2017)
A Trump administration memorandum issued Thursday declared a state of emergency in domestic timber supply and national forest health, directing the Forest Service to suspend normal environmental reviews and increase logging on more than 100 million acres of national forest, including in the Pacific Northwest.
The memo from the secretary of agriculture is a first step in implementing President Donald Trump’s March 1 executive order directing cutting of more national forests. The memo has the effect of declaring nearly 60% of all national forestlands to be in a state of emergency, thereby lifting the usual requirements for public comment and environmental review for protection of endangered species and cultural resources before logging.
Millions of acres of national forest are targeted for logging under an emergency order from the Trump administration. Declaring a state of emergency in domestic timber supply and forest health, the Trump administration has issued an order to cut millions of acres of national forest including in the Pacific Northwest.
USDA, U.S. Forest Service (Fiona Martin / The Seattle Times)
All regional foresters with the Forest Service were also ordered to develop five-year strategies to increase their timber volume to achieve an agencywide increase of 25%. The directive was issued by acting Associate Chief Christopher French in a memo to all regional foresters issued Thursday.
Timber organizations cheered the federal action Thursday. “America’s wood products should come from American forests — especially those in the Pacific Northwest, where management follows some of the most rigorous scientific, labor, and environmental standards in the world,” said Nick Smith, spokesperson for the American Forest Resource Council, an industry group based in Portland.
The memorandum will help supply sustainably harvested wood to local mills and provide family-wage jobs across Washington, Smith said. Opponents vowed to fight the emergency order because it violates federal law. “This order is a trumped-up fake emergency whose real purpose is to enrich Big Timber by feeding our national forests into the woodchipper,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a prepared statement.
Others say the order is misguided and will not protect forests from wildfire. “Throughout national forests, there will be less public involvement and environmental review,” said Mike Anderson, senior policy analyst for The Wilderness Society. “These are public lands and the public should have a voice in how they are managed … there will be more risk of environmental damage from these projects.”
The focus on increasing commercial production actually will put communities at greater fire risk, Anderson said, by prioritizing logging of big, commercially valuable trees that don’t pose a fire risk and taking attention from thinning dense stands of small trees that are fire-prone. “It is really an unfortunate turn of events.”
The order has special meaning in the Northwest where millions of acres of national forest in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California have since 1994 been managed under the Northwest Forest Plan. The plan protects old growth and older forests from logging to sustain threatened species, including the northern spotted owl.
The plan remains in effect. However, areas of national forest within the plan area where logging is allowed would see reduced environmental review and increased logging. Even old growth that has burned could be logged on an expedited basis.
The memorandum doesn’t affect the amendment process underway to update the Northwest Forest Plan. The Forest Service is being set up to fail, said Steve Pedery, conservation director at Oregon Wild, especially as the Trump administration also cuts service staff needed to do the work of drawing up logging plans. “They couldn’t do this before … because it’s illegal, and they certainly can’t do it now, because it’s still illegal, and they don’t have the staff.”
The effect of the memorandum is yet to be seen. If Forest Service offices design cuts in national forests that are contrary to environmental protections, they can expect lawsuits, Pedery said. “This memorandum is intended to facilitate the looting of national forests around the country,” Pedery said. “There is still an Endangered Species Act. There is still a Clean Water Act. There is still a National Environmental Policy Act.”
USDA Orders to Expand Logging in National Forests Under Emergency 4/5/25
A crew member uses a tree processor to strip bark and branches from logs before being transported to a mill near Camptonville, Calif., Tuesday, June 6, 2023. Godofredo A. Vásquez /AP Photo
Agriculture secretary declared 59 percent of national forests to be in an emergency situation due to high risk of wildfires and hazardous tree conditions. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a memo on Friday allowing the use of more than 112 million acres of national forests for logging to increase timber production and reduce wildfire risk.
In the memo dated April 3, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins declared these forests—making up 59 percent of national forests—to be in an emergency situation due to their high risk of wildfires and hazardous tree conditions. The memo was released on April 4. Rollins stated that the national forests are in crisis due to “uncharacteristically severe wildfires, insect and disease outbreaks, invasive species, and other stressors.”
Those threats—combined with overgrown forests, the growing number of homes in the wildland-urban interface, and decades of rigorous fire suppression—have contributed to a “full-blown wildfire” and “forest health crisis,” according to the memo. “Healthy forests require work, and right now, we’re facing a national forest emergency,” Rollins said in a statement. “We have an abundance of timber at high risk of wildfires in our National Forests.”
The emergency designation would allow the Forest Service to expedite approval for logging activity in the designated forests, bypassing the usual processes required under national environmental laws. The memo directs Forest Service personnel to increase timber production by 25 percent over the next four to five years, while also meeting the minimum requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental laws.
In a letter to Forest Service regional foresters, acting associate chief Christopher French said he will direct regulatory authorities to streamline approval processes for timber production in the designated forests. French called on regional foresters “to the maximum extent practicable, use existing and new categorical exclusions for timber stand improvement, salvage, and other site preparation activities for reforestation, consistent with applicable law.”
Environmental group Earthjustice has rejected the USDA’s emergency designation. “This absurdly vast, and poorly justified, emergency determination aims to boost logging and reduce environmental safeguards across most national forestlands in a handout to the logging industry,” Earthjustice legislative representative Blaine Miller-McFeeley said in a statement.
Miller-McFeeley said that cutting down trees that currently serve as “important buffers against climate change” will not help to reduce the threat of wildfires, and that it could cause “significant harm” to forest ecosystems and negatively impact the outdoor recreation economy.
The memo follows President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at increasing domestic timber and lumber production. The first executive order directed “all affected agencies” to suspend regulations “that impose an undue burden on timber production.” The second directed the commerce secretary to investigate the national security implications of timber imports.
Trump stated that the country’s abundance of timber resources is “more than adequate” to meet domestic needs, but that “heavy-handed Federal policies have prevented full utilization of these resources” and caused it to rely on imported lumber.
“It is vital that we reverse these policies and increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security,” Trump stated in his order issued on March 1.
His second order states that the United States’ softwood lumber industry has the practical production capacity to meet 95 percent of its softwood consumption last year. Despite this capacity, the country has been a net importer of lumber since 2016, it stated.
The Forest Service has sold about 3 billion board feet of timber annually for the past decade. Timber sales peaked several decades ago at about 12 billion board feet amid widespread clear-cutting of forests.
Volumes dropped sharply in the 1980s and 1990s as environmental protections were tightened and more areas were put off limits to logging. Most timber is harvested from private lands.
The article below shows that President Trump tried to attack our national forests in his first term! However, a federal judge blocked the logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest!
Federal Judge Blocks Logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest 9/26/19
Carrol Inlet in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska. Brock Martin, United States Forest Service
For the second time this year, a federal judge in Alaska has blocked the Trump administration’s resource development plans in the far north, this time halting a move to make thousands of acres in America’s largest national forest available for logging.
U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason of Anchorage issued an injunction Sept. 23 that temporarily stops the administration from allowing tree-harvesting on 42,500 acres of temperate rainforest in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The restraining order came the day before the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) was scheduled to begin reviewing bids on an initial offering of 1,156 acres of trees. In March, the USFS said it intended to make 2.2 million acres of forest available for logging and to allow road construction on the remaining acreage. Two months later, environmentalists sued to prevent the policy from moving forward.
Environmentalists were delighted to learn of the court decision. “Today’s preliminary ruling is a victory for wildlife and proper management of our nation’s irreplaceable forests,” Patrick Lavin, senior Alaska representative at the Defenders of Wildlife said, according to The Hill newspaper.
“Moving forward with this initial sale would have ignited 15 years of clearcutting that would further destroy and fragment the remaining ancient forest habitat on Prince of Wales Island,” Lavin said. At more than 2,500 square miles in size, Prince of Wales Island, located in the Alexander Archipelago in the Alaska Panhandle, is the fourth-largest island that is U.S. sovereign territory, when Puerto Rico is included.
“In a victory for the Tongass National Forest, today’s court ruling has spared nearly 1,200 acres of irreplaceable old-growth rainforest from chainsaws and roads—at least for now,” Olivia Glasscock, an attorney with Earthjustice, which represented the successful plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement. Earthjustice is a San Francisco-based environmentalist public-interest law firm whose motto is: “Because the earth needs a good lawyer.”
“This is only the beginning,” she said. “A total of 42,500 acres of temperate rainforest still hangs in the balance and we will continue working on behalf of our clients to defend these irreplaceable public lands, which safeguard our climate, provide habitat for wildlife and offer enjoyment for all.”
Commentator Donny Ferguson, who supports the Trump administration’s logging policies, wasn’t pleased. “Science shows allowing timber harvesting makes forests healthier,” Ferguson, president of Americans for a Better Economy, an Alexandria, Virginia-based nonprofit organization, told The Epoch Times. “It removes diseased trees and dead wood fire fuel,” he said.
“Opponents of timber harvesting are largely rich urban coastal elites who donate millions to the socialist groups who file these lawsuits. This hurts the ecosystem in a drive to kill jobs, downsize the economy, and advance socialism. They’re making our forests sicker, spreading disease, and fueling wildfires. Once again, we have to ask ‘Who will save the Earth from environmentalists?’”
The ruling also came after Gleason decided in a separate case on March 29 to invalidate President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13795, removing then-President Barack Obama’s bans on oil and natural gas exploration in the Arctic Ocean and on the North Atlantic coast. In League of Conservation Voters v. Trump, Gleason, appointed in 2011 by then-President Barack Obama, found that Trump violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) of 1953.
In the current case, cited as Southeast Alaska Conservation Council v. U.S. Forest Service, Gleason ruled that the plaintiffs “have demonstrated that they are very likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary injunctive relief.”
On an interim basis, the court blocked the USFS from allowing the “cutting of trees, road construction, or other ground-disturbing activities” in the affected areas. The court also ordered USFS not to move forward with taking and reviewing bids for logging rights in the forest.
“Based on the foregoing, Plaintiffs have established that they will suffer irreparable harm if the harvest—particularly of old growth trees—authorized by the Twin Mountain Timber Sale occurs,” Gleason wrote.
Importance of Trees and Plants
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
She is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation ”People of the Place of the Fire” and speaks a little of the Potawatomi language which is a member of the Algonquin family. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation is the federally-recognized government and represents over 37,000 members. It acts under a Constitution that includes executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Potawatomi are located in the western Great Lakes region, upper Mississippi River, and Great Plains.
Professor Kimmerer is the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin, and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, traditional knowledge, and restoration ecology. Prof. Kimmerer is interested in restoration of ecological communities and our relationships to land. She lives in Syracuse, NY on an old farm tending cultivated and wild gardens.
Professor Kimmerer is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants. Wikipedia says: “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants received the 2014 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. By 2021, over 500,000 copies had been sold worldwide.” The beautifully-written book has been a word-of-mouth sensation and hit the New York Times Best Seller List. Kimmerer is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. The MacArthur Fellowship is a $800,000, grant for individuals who have shown exceptional creativity in their work and the promise to do more.
In the video below, Professor Kimmer explains that we are afraid to acknowledge what we have done (and are doing) to the world on which our survival depends. She is joined by Richard Powers, author of The Overstory which Ann Patchett described as “The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period.”
What We Are Afraid Of
In the video below, Professor Kimmer is joined by Richard Powers, author of The Overstory which Ann Patchett described as “The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period.” Professor Kimmer explains that we are afraid to acknowledge what we have done (and are doing) to the world on which our survival depends.
Tales of Sweetgrass & Trees: Robin Wall Kimmerer & Richard Powers with Terry Tempest Williams
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is author of the prize-winning Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Outstanding Nature Writing. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
Richard Powers is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Overstory. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Award, and he has been a Pulitzer Prize and four-time National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. The Overstory has been a New York Times Bestseller; shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize; a New York Times Notable; Washington Post, Time, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018.
Terry Tempest Williams joined Harvard Divinity School as a writer-in-residence for the 2017-18 academic year and is continuing in 2018-19. She is the author of numerous books, including the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Her most recent book is The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks, which was published in June 2016 to coincide with and honor the centennial of the National Park Service. Her writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change.
The Rights of Nature Movement
UO Today With Robin Kimmerer
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She is also the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Kimmerer discusses how indigenous wisdom has enlightened her science. She also shares the Anishinaabe creation story of Skywoman and the lessons the story teaches us about our relationship with the Earth.
Seven Ways To Define “Land”
In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, Professor Kimmerer discusses seven ways to define “land”.
- LAND AS “CAPITAL”: Land is a means to make money. What’s done to it doesn’t matter.
- LAND AS “PROPERYTY”: Land is a collection of “resources” to be exploited and left desolate. For example, trees are defined in terms of “board feet of lumber” and their priceless irreplaceable ecological gifts are ignored. Whole rainforests like the Amazon are destroyed without thought.
- LAND AS “MACHINE:” Peopled with engineers and foresters whose goal is to reestablish structure and function for a very specific purpose.
- LAND AS “TEACHER AND HEALER”: This is the indigenous view. Professor Kimmerer explains that her Haudenosaunee neighbors say, “Human beings are the younger brothers and sisters of Creation. We haven’t been here nearly as long as the plants. So, that notion of humility — understanding the rest of the world as our teachers — is a profound change. Thinking of yourselves as the Younger Brothers of Creation instead of Masters of the Universe is a kind of cultural transformation that we need to have.”
President Evo Morales of Bolivia presented The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth to the United Nations in 2009. However, while the US grants personhood and rights to corporations, it does not to plants, animals, rivers, or the Earth. So, the West is living in an inanimate, dead world and is killing off one species after another — and now humanity is at risk. Professor Kimmerer explains that the Western worldview creates a crisis of loneliness. This is the existential loneliness that Belgian Professor Mattias Desmet, author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism, says leads to the “Mass Formation” (psychosis) that fuels the kind of totalitarianism we saw during COVID.
- LAND AS “RESPONSIBILITY”: Professor Kimmerer explains that this raises the bar for what restoration means because it includes making habitat for our non-human relatives.
- LAND AS “SACRED”/LAND AS “COMMUNITY”: Professor Kimmerer says: “Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contamination. It is medicine for the earth.”
- LAND AS “HOME”: Professor Kimmerer describes how restored land will look.
Read the full article here
