Trump Taps Obscure Laws to Boost Logging in Oregon, Alaska

The Trump administration is turning to rarely used laws to circumvent environmental restrictions and expand logging in certain Pacific Northwest forests, legal analysts and advocates say.

In plans announced in February to expand logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and on federal land in western Oregon, the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service both cite laws that pertain specifically to those lands to support more timber harvesting.

The administration is using the 1990 Tongass Timber Reform Act to prioritize logging in the largest national forest in the US, and BLM is citing a 1937 law, the Oregon and California Revested Railroad Lands Act, to do so on its land in western Oregon. Both apply only to specific forests and envision logging as a primary use of those lands.

The agencies are using federal laws that “privilege timber harvesting and will use that argument to short circuit environmental protections,” especially at the expense of endangered species, said Andrew Mergen, a Harvard Law School professor who was previously a lawyer at the Justice Department’s Environment & Natural Resources Division.

The Trump administration has often used obscure laws or provisions of bedrock environmental laws to prioritize natural resource extraction such as logging and oil drilling, or to stop disfavored projects. The administration cited national security to block offshore wind farms in December, and has cited emergency provisions of the Endangered Species Act to expedite energy development.

“Bringing timber production back to historic levels is essential for reviving local economies and reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfire,” acting BLM director Bill Groffy said in a Feb. 18 statement. “Enhanced domestic timber production is vital for our national security, economic prosperity, and effective wildfire management.”

The BLM’s plan to revise land management guidelines in western Oregon cites a need to return logging to levels that existed before the northern spotted owl was protected under the Endangered Species Act. At the same time, the management plan for Tongass needs to be modernized to prioritize “long-term regional prosperity,” Tongass National Forest Supervisor Monique Nelson said in a February statement.

The Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska is the world’s largest remaining coastal temperate rain forest and the largest national forest in the US.

The timber industry is seeking to expand access to federal forests after decades-long logging curtailments tied to endangered species protections for the spotted owl and other imperiled animals.

Both the Forest Service and BLM are “working to align federal forest policy with the administration’s goals of increasing domestic timber production and reducing wildfire risk,” said Nick Smith, spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, a trade group representing wood products manufacturers that source their lumber from federal land.

Demand For Tongass Wood

In Alaska, the US Forest Service cited the 1990 Tongass Timber Reform Act to support expanded logging, mining, and tourism in the 16.7 million acre forest. The law requires the Forest Service to meet the market demand for timber from the Tongass.

Smith said about 90% of Tongass timber is off-limits to loggers under the existing forest plan.

But, “there isn’t a booming market for old growth timber in Alaska,” said Susan Jane Brown, principal at Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm in Portland, Ore. “A very small niche market around piano and guitar wood, maybe, but that ‘demand’ could be met from selective harvest, not the millions of board feet that the timber industry in Alaska seeks.”

Large-scale old-growth logging would compromise subsistence and trust obligations to Alaska Native tribes under different federal laws, she said.

Mergen said he’ll be watching potential court challenges to the Tongass plan carefully because the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has been a “guardian of Tongass conservation values, going so far as to hear Tongass issues en banc.”

The Ninth Circuit in 2015 issued an en banc opinion in Organized Village of Kake v. USDA, upholding roadless area protections for the Tongass—protections President Donald Trump ordered the USDA to repeal.

‘Sustained Yield’

The BLM’s plan, which would amend land management plans for the region, focuses on a checkerboard-pattern of federal land ownership in western Oregon, which is managed under the Oregon and California Revested Railroad Lands Act of 1937, or the O&C Act. The law calls for “sustained-yield” timber harvest on federal parcels, with revenue shared with local counties.

Smith said the BLM is bringing its land in the region back in line with the law.

“Actual harvest levels have remained well below the forests’ annual growth, which has implications for both county revenues and forest conditions,” he said.

But the idea that the O&C Act mandates maximum timber extraction in western Oregon is a mistake because federal courts have upheld logging restrictions, Brown said.

The law requires the BLM to manage O&C lands for multiple uses like other land the bureau manages, she said.

The stakes are high for endangered and threatened species living in O&C lands, said Erich Reeder, a retired BLM biological science technician in western Oregon.

“We’d be going back to an industrial timber model,” he said, adding that areas reserved for imperiled species are targeted to be scrapped without yet any research showing the spotted owl and marbeled murrelet can survive the logging.

Environmentalists pledge to sue if the Forest Service and BLM’s plans to expand logging are finalized.

“Both of these planning efforts are going to take at least 18 months to complete – and then the litigation will begin in earnest,” Brown said.