Hundreds of thousands of acres of forests in Western North Carolina still bear the scars of the devastating Hurricane Helene, as shown in the picture above. State logging plans in Western NC have put too much pressure on the already damaged forests, a common scene along the path of the destructive Hurricane Helene in several Southern states. Now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) threatens to put even greater pressure on state and national forests, in both NC and across the country.
Pushing forward with its plan to boost domestic timber production by 25%, the Trump administration seeks to cut away environmental reviews and regulations, in order to expand logging operations to over half of what were previously protected national forests. The official reasoning for this change is twofold: first, to expand domestic timber production. Second, to aggressively manage so-called crisis forests. In a memo (which does not once mention climate change), USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins ‘determined’ that tens of millions of acres of national forests are at a high wildfire risk and therefore must be sold off and chopped down as quickly as possible. This would bypass so-called “heavy-handed federal policies” such as giving nearby communities time to make a case against cutting down nearby forests, or proper environmental reviews around wildlife habitats and broader environmental effects.
As the climate crisis continues and the planet gets warmer, wildfires will only become more frequent and intense. But the way forward is not to privatize and cut down the 146 million acres (the state of California comprises some 105 million acres, for reference) of national forest lands referenced by the USDA secretary, which store innumerable tons of carbon that would then be released into the atmosphere. And while it is true that harvesting trees can sometimes be beneficial for the overall health of a forest, this does not seem to be the motivation behind these proposals. Consider the following statement from the March 1st Executive Order: “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.” This isn’t about saving forests—it’s about profit, plain and simple, wrapped in “America first” rhetoric.
The world is facing the increasing effects of the climate catastrophe. The Trump administration thinks that climate change is a hoax, and for all their hand-wringing there is nothing the Democrats are meaningfully doing about any of this. It’s up to us, not just to stand up to Trump’s assault on hard fought environmental protections, but to take down this system that promises to harvest, package, and consume our whole world. We’ve all wondered whether a tree falling with no one around to hear it makes a sound. What about a forest? What about a hundred forests?
