The Trump administration announced Friday that it plans to remove protections on tens of millions of acres of public forest by declaring a wildfire-related emergency, a move that critics believe will lead to the destruction of massive swaths of older trees that are actually more resilient to fire.
In a memo released internally Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued an “Emergency Situation Determination” covering more than 110 million acres of land in the National Forest System. The memo comes on the heels of an executive order issued by President Donald Trump to expand timber production in the country by 25 percent.
The agency says the declaration will authorize emergency operations to “reduce wildfire risk and save American lives and communities.”
Environmental groups say the move is the administration’s next step toward achieving its goal of increasing timber production under the guise of wildfire protection.
“Nobody should be fooled into thinking that this secretarial order or Trump’s executive order are anything more than a handout to the industry to basically log-baby-log on our public lands,” said Randi Spivak, the public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Nobody should be fooled that this has anything to do with wildfires.”
The most destructive and notable fires in recent years—in Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2023, and in Los Angeles earlier this year—were in urban areas, far from U.S. Forest Service land covered by the new order.
“Those weren’t forest fires,” said Anna Medema, who works on forest and public land issues for the Sierra Club. “No amount of forest management would have changed those tragedies.”
The move comes amid massive staffing cuts at the Forest Service, including of many employees certified to fight wildfires, and funding freezes that have halted projects aimed at reducing wildfire risk.
“There are a lot of shovel-ready projects ready to go, but they don’t have the staff now to do them,” Medema said. “They’re using fear and the moment, saying we need to get into the forests and log, but they’re removing the resources to fight wildfires.”
The declaration covers roughly 60 percent of the lands in the national forest system, much of it home to older trees, which are more resilient to wildfires because of their thicker bark and extensive root systems. These trees are targeted by industrial logging because of their size.
“Science shows that harvesting mature and old-growth trees can actually make wildfires worse,” Medema said.
Trump’s executive order, issued last month, demands that agency leaders “streamline” the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act to expedite logging operations. Environmental groups believe the administration will likely issue additional emergency orders under the ESA that would allow logging companies to bypass more rigorous review processes. The 2001 “roadless rule” that prohibits the construction of roads on Forest Service land—a rule designed to limit access—is also likely in the administration’s crosshairs.
“I don’t think this is the end of it,” Spivak said. “Trump is saying, in a nutshell: Any regulations or protections that get in the way of timber production, get them out of the way.”
A USDA spokesperson reiterated its commitment to Rollins’s plans in a statement. “The USDA Forest Service stands ready to fulfill the Secretary’s vision of productive and resilient national forests outlined in the memorandum. 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,” they said. “Active management has long been at the core of Forest Service efforts to address the many challenges faced by the people and communities we serve, and we will leverage our expertise to support healthy forests, sustainable economies, and rural prosperity for generations to come.”
This post has been updated to include comments from a USDA spokesperson.
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