Falling back on a familiar, unilateral method in Executive Orders, Donald Trump demanded via fiat that U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) raze 280m acres (or 113m hectares) of ecologically sensitive trees for timber. The order “evades rules” protecting endangered species and is quite likely illegal, per Oliver Milman for The Guardian:
Trump has instructed the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to increase logging targets and for officials to circumvent the US’s Endangered Species Act by using unspecified emergency powers to ignore protections placed upon vulnerable creatures’ habitats. This move is similar to recent instructions by Trump to use a rarely-used committee to push through fossil fuel projects even if they imperil at-risk species. Experts have said this overriding of the Endangered Species Act is probably illegal.
Oliver Milman, The Guardian
If exploiting obscure laws sounds familiar, that’s because Trump and associates did the same by relying on the Alien Enemies Act for his illegal-deportation scheme. Reducing trees on public lands by increasing timber sales “for wildfire prevention” is also a key plank of Heritage Foundation‘s Project 2025.
This move is similar to recent instructions by Trump to use a rarely-used committee to push through fossil fuel projects even if they imperil at-risk species. Experts have said this overriding of the Endangered Species Act is probably illegal. The order also stipulates logging projects can be sped up if they are for purported wildfire risk reduction, via ‘thinning’ of vegetation that could ignite. Some scientists have said that aggressively felling forests, particularly established, fire-resistant trees, actually increases the risk of fast-moving fires.
Oliver Milan, The Guardian
Wildfire scientist Chad Hanson called Trump’s EO the “most blatant attempt in American history by a president to hand over federal public lands to the logging industry.” .
