U.S. Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Chris French is calling for a 25-percent increase increase in timber production, meaning the U.S, would produce about 4.4 billion board-feet by July 4, 2025. Photo Public Domain
by Robert Chaney
Big plans to restructure how the U.S. Forest Service cuts trees could trip over equally big plans to cut its federal budget.
A national strategy to increase timber production and use emergency authorities to protect forests from fire, insects and disease should be in place by May 3, according to an order by Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Chris French. At the same time, the agency is consolidating its nine regional offices into two or three centers.
Simultaneously, its parent U.S. Department of Agriculture could lose as many as 30,000 of its 100,000 employees, according to the bipartisan consulting firm Brumidi Group. Approximately 12,000 of those are expected to leave in the second wave of buyout offers in late April, with a quarter of those coming from the Forest Service. The remaining 18,000 USDA employees are expected to be fired, the firm said.
How that might play out in Greater Yellowstone regions like the Bridger Teton or Custer Gallatin national forests is not clear. A spokesperson for the national forest told Mountain Journal that no forest-level information was available beyond French’s announcement.
"The USDA Forest Service stands ready to fulfill the Secretary [of Interior]’s vision of productive and resilient national forests outlined in the memorandum,” the unidentified spokesperson said in an email. “In alignment with the Secretary’s direction, we will streamline forest management efforts, reduce burdensome regulations, and grow partnerships to support economic growth and sustainability.”
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have the largest concentration of national forest acres in the Lower 48.
A boost in timber supply would be welcome news to Sun Mountain Lumber outreach forester Sean Steinebach.
“I’d say we’re kind of hopeful,” said Steinebach, whose company operates sawmills in Livingston and Deer Lodge. “This is the first time in my career we’ve had this much attention on the industry. But we’re still waiting for the dust to settle.”
With a looming fire and tourist season about to spin up activity in the woods, the Forest Service’s ability to handle baseline missions while reinventing itself has other longtime forest observers worried.
“Trying to do more management without people is a fool’s errand,” said Jim Burchfield, former dean of the University of Montana Forestry School. “We need to do a lot of proactive management for forest resilience and wildfire risk. But you’re not going to get this done without people. An agency with suddenly half the staff can’t do all this work – that’s only going to create frustration.”
THE TO-DO LIST
President Donald Trump triggered a blizzard of changes to the nation’s public lands management in his first three months in office, both directly and indirectly.
Among his first acts after inauguration on January 20 were executive orders declaring a national energy emergency and a federal workforce hiring freeze. The energy order directed the Forest Service and other public lands agencies to clear away permitting obstacles to fossil fuel exploration and development. But the hiring freeze, combined with thousands of staff terminations through the Department of Government Efficiency, paralyzed many of the departments tasked with issuing those permits.
Map courtesy U.S. Government Accountability Office
“The current United States softwood lumber industry has the practical production capacity to supply 95 percent of the United States’ 2024 softwood consumption,” the imports order stated. “Yet, since 2016 the United States has been a net importer of lumber.”
The timber order called on the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to find new ways of increasing timber supply, and to reduce obstacles to those changes by limiting the force of the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and by taking “all necessary and appropriate steps consistent with applicable law to suspend, revise, or rescind all existing regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, settlements, consent orders, and other agency actions that impose an undue burden on timber production.”
"The challenges are that in many places the forest plan provides the timber, but the [sawmill] infrastructure isn’t there anymore.” – Mary Erickson, former Supervisor, Custer Gallatin National Forest
On April 3, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins put Trump’s executive orders into a memorandum declaring an “emergency situation on national forest system lands.” It stated, “The United States has an abundance of timber resources that are more than adequate to meet our domestic timber production needs, but heavy-handed federal policies have prevented full utilization of these resources and made us reliant on foreign producers. It is vital that we reverse these policies and increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security.”
French’s memo came out the same day. It called for a new national strategy for active forest management within 30 days, followed by five-year plans leading to a 25-percent increase in timber production over the next five years.
“When I saw the 25 percent timber increase over four years, I was glad it was only 25 percent,” said Mary Erickson, recently retired supervisor of the Custer Gallatin National Forest. “You probably, within the existing forest plans, could increase domestic timber production by 25 percent. The challenges are that in many places the forest plan provides the timber, but the [sawmill] infrastructure isn’t there anymore.”
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins designates 112.6 million Forest Service acres are worthy of emergency management. That covers 59 percent of all national forest lands.
Erickson spent much of her 45-year federal career as a forester, considering active management and timber production as essential parts of the Forest Service mission. But she added much of French’s memo articulates what was already in progress before the Trump administration, such as Biden-era changes to categorical exclusions, ESA consultation streamlining and expedited permitting. And not every forest makes great 2-by-4s.
“When I look at a forest like the Custer Gallatin, the largest economic driver by far, by orders of magnitude, is recreation,” Erickson said. “Then mining, and then livestock grazing. Wood products is a very small part of the return this forest creates. It’s not this huge revenue-generating economic driver the [French] letter would make it out to be.”
A 2024 Government Accountability Office timber analysis found that most Forest Service logs came from the Oregon, Washington and the southeast’s Regions 6 and 8, followed by the northeast Region 9. The Greater Yellowstone forests of Region 1 ranked third on the list of timber volume, while the parts of southern Idaho and western Wyoming in Region 4 were among the least productive.
MATH PROBLEMS
The numbers declared in the Forest Service memos have also raised eyebrows. Rollins’ own directive for emergency situation determination states there are 66.9 million Forest Service acres “rated as very high or high wildfire risk.” Another 78.8 million acres “are experiencing declining forest health … from insect and disease.” So in total, Rollins designates 112.6 million acres worthy of emergency management. That covers 59 percent of all national forest lands.
But the memo also notes that of the places at risk of fire and the places affected by insects and disease, only 33.8 million acres have both. And throughout the Forest Service’s 144 million forested acres, “approximately 43 million acres [are] suitable for timber production.
“The current map reflects boundaries within which there may be wilderness, roadless, or other special designation areas, as well as lakes, roads, structures, etc.” a Forest Service spokesperson said in response to a Mountain Journal request for details of potential logging lands. “Mechanical treatments are not allowed in designated wilderness areas, so logging is excluded. Restrictions or conditions associated with project level decisions, forest plans, regulations or Congressional Designations remain.”
Workers at Sun Mountain Lumber, which purchased R-Y Timber in Livingston in 2023. Photo courtesy Sean Steinebach
The spokesperson added a revised timber production map “would be available soon,” but had no firm date. French’s memo calls for five-year strategies “for an agency-wide increase of 25 percent [timber volume increase]” within 60 days, or around July 4.
The Forest Service cut 2.9 billion board-feet of timber in 2023, according to the GAO report. A 25-percent increase would produce about 4.4 billion board-feet. Between 1966 and 1992, the agency cut between 12 billion and 14 billion board-feet. Since then, restrictions on unsustainable forestry practices in the West and massive expansion of Southeast private timber production have changed the sources of the nation’s wood supply.
“These dry, western forests are really in peril,” Burchfield said. “Hot summers, prolonged droughts, human ignitions; I’m not arguing there’s not a forest crisis. There is. But to randomly throw out a number — treat this many acres based on fire risk — is not reasonable. People are going to have to start dealing with the real world.”
MOVING THE BOSSES
While those orders hit the public debate, an internal Forest Service reorganization was also getting started. Forest Service officials declined to comment on the proposals or acknowledge their existence, but the recommendations have been circulating through public lands policy circles since early March.
The Forest Service currently has nine regional offices, numbering 1 through 10, except Region 7 was absorbed by regions 8 and 9 in the 1960s for budget reasons. Montana and northern Idaho are in Region 1, headquartered in Missoula. Southern Idaho and western Wyoming are in Region 4, headquartered in Salt Lake City. Eastern Wyoming is in Region 2, along with Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and most of South Dakota. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have the largest concentration of national forest acres in the Lower 48.
Below that administration sit 154 national forests. Various proposals in circulation recommend reducing the nine regional offices to two, three or six. National forests have already been on a consolidation push, i.e.: the Custer Gallatin, Helena-Lewis and Clark, and Bridger Teton.
“Going from nine regions to three — that’s huge,” Erickson said. “Being a forest supervisor on a large forest, you have all those local connections as you’re going about the implementation of the forest plan. The regional office runs interference on budgets, resources, governors and higher-level state agencies. If you have many fewer regional offices, it fundamentally changes what comes down to the forest level.”
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About Robert Chaney
Robert Chaney grew up in western Montana and has spent most of his journalism career writing about the Rocky Mountain West, its people, and their environment. His book The Grizzly in the Driveway earned a 2021 Society of Environmental Journalists Rachel Carson Award. In Montana, Chaney has written, photographed, edited and managed for the Hungry Horse News, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Missoulian and Montana Free Press. He studied political science at Macalester College and has won numerous awards for his writing and photography, including fellowships at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and the National Evolutionary Science Center at Duke University.
