EXECUTIVE ORDER TO CUT MORE TREES
With a partial government shutdown looming, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that expands logging on public land on the grounds that it will curb wildfires.
Trump plan to expand logging on public lands on the grounds it will curb wildfires.
The declaration, issued the Friday before Christmas, reflects Trump’s interest in forest management since a spate of wildfires ravaged California last year. While many scientists and Western governors have urged federal officials to adopt a suite of policies to tackle the problem, including cuts in greenhouse gases linked to climate change, the president has focused on expanding timber sales.
The executive order instructs the secretaries of agriculture and interior to consider harvesting a total of 4.4 billion board feet of timber from forest land managed by their agencies on millions of acres, and put it up for sale. The order would translate into a 31 percent increase in forest service logging since 2017.
In addition to removing trees, Trump asked his secretaries to remove forest brush and debris that help fuel fires from more than 4 million acres and treat another 1.5 million acres to control tree-destroying pests. The order, published last week in the Federal Register, does not specify a deadline to accomplish the president’s goal.
University of Colorado Boulder Profes- sor Jennifer Balch said in an email that while treating federal forests makes sense near homes, that policy prescription won’t make a serious dent in the size and intensity of wildfires out West. These fires have increased fivefold since the 1970s as temperatures have risen and snowpack has shrunk. Just 2 percent of lands treated by the Forest Service between 2004 and 2013 experienced a wildfire.
“We can’t log our way out of the fire problem — thinning all the forests is not possible,” the fire ecologist said. “And even if it were, it won’t stop fires in the extreme weather that is happening more frequently, and will in the future.”
The Camp fire’s massive impact came into sharp focus Sunday, as the utility PG&E filed a notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission suggesting it would file for bankruptcy because it faces more than $30 billion in liability in connection with the state’s wildfires. The company’s CEO, Geisha Williams, also stepped down.
Many California residents fault PG&E’s power lines for the wildfires that ravaged the state last year, and the matter is under investigation.
A piece published Nov. 30 in Geophysical Research Letters found that human-induced climate change now influences a fifth of the world’s fires.
Balch noted that the executive order did not address some kinds of the vegetation that makes communities vulnerable to fire, such as the chaparral that spread a fire in November that destroyed hundreds of Malibu-area homes. “You can’t log shrubs,” she said.
Despite the fact that the Forest Service is shuttered, officials there have given loggers permission to keep operating on existing sales — which was prohibited during both the 1995 and 2013 shutdowns — and are now exploring holding new auctions even if the government remains closed.
Trump has repeatedly blamed devastating wildfires out West on poor forest management, rejecting the idea that climate change could be leading to a longer and more intense fire season.
The president has regularly asked advisers how he could punish California for what he deems as poor forestry. Trump has been told repeatedly that he cannot take away money that has already been appropriated for the disaster, according to individuals familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. Advisers have argued that taking such money from California would only hurt the citizens — not the elected officials he wants to punish.