Acreage within the Ouachita National Forest in far-eastern Oklahoma and what appears to be the Black Kettle National Grassland to the west were targeted in a memo from U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. The new policy would expand and speed up harvesting on public lands to produce timber products in the U.S.
Rollins said the initiative is also focused on conservation and would lead to healthier forests, though some groups disagree.
“Healthy forests require work, and right now, we’re facing a national forest emergency,” Rollins said in a news release. “We have an abundance of timber at high risk of wildfires in our National Forests.”
Globally, scientists say, forests face threats from wildfires, extreme weather caused by climate change and invasive species. Management with careful harvesting is shown to help with forest health, though deforestation has led to a significant loss of biodiversity.
Advocates say the new policy would sidestep public input and damage ecosystems.
“What Donald Trump and his cabinet are actually interested in is using any power at their disposal to hand over control of the public lands and national forests that belong to all of us to billionaires and logging companies,” said Anna Medema, the Sierra Club’s associate director of legislative and administrative advocacy for forests and public lands in a news release. “The American people should not tolerate this sleight of hand from the people who have a duty to protect these landscapes for the next generation.”
National forests in the U.S. – which differ from national parks – already see some logging, though the directive would expedite permitting processes to expand the industry. According to the Associated Press, the policy removes exemptions that allow communities and tribal nations to object to proposed logging projects.
“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,” the memo reads.
Rollins wrote the USDA plans to work with states and tribal nations on the logging policy. As of Tuesday, Oklahoma’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry said it did not receive notice from the federal level.
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