What the priorities of Trump’s USDA mean for MN's national forests

Managing forest health is like steering a big ship, Lee Frelich said.

“When you come into the harbor, when you’re 10 miles out, you have to be aimed the right direction. You can’t change it when you’re only a few hundred feet away,” he said. “Managing a forest is a lot like that.”

Since 2000, Frelich has been the director of the University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology. He explained foresters must anticipate what the forest will be like in the coming decades, while also being constrained by the previous generations’ management.

The exclusion of fire on the landscape since European settlement has led to denser forests that burn more intensely, Frelich said. More intense fires, while beneficial for some ecosystems, are more likely to kill trees and damage forest ecosystems.

Reducing wildfire risk is one of the stated reasons for the “sweeping reforms” announced by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on April 4.

Rollins issued a memo placing some 60% of national forest lands under an emergency determination, allowing special action and suspending some environmental review for those actions.

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USDA

The memo was spurred by President Donald Trump’s Executive Order to boost domestic timber production. A news release from the USDA said it will make forests healthier, reduce wildfire risk and boost domestic timber production

The memo attached to the announcement points to uncharacteristically severe wildfires, insect and disease outbreaks, invasive species and other stressors, made worse by too little active management.

Minnesota is home to two national forests: the 1.6-million-acre Chippewa between Bemidji and Grand Rapids and the 3-million-acre Superior in the Arrowhead.

Spruce budworm is a major problem in northeast Minnesota, in part because decades of fire suppression allowed forests to grow denser and older, benefiting the insect. The state Department of Natural Resources has serious concerns about wildfire potential.

“Healthy forests require work, and right now, we’re facing a national forest emergency,” Rollins said in the release.

Frelich isn’t sure “emergency” is the right word to use for the situation.

“An emergency in a forest fire situation is a much more immediate thing,” he explained.

“If you have a wildfire going, it's just going to grab all available resources immediately. Whereas the longer-term management and getting things back to a healthier condition, that’s not really an emergency; that’s a change in long-term strategy.”

KAXE asked Minnesota’s national forests about how the memo changes forest management and what it practically means for the region’s timber industry and received identical answers from the USDA in response.

“The USDA Forest Service stands ready to fulfill the Secretary’s vision of productive and resilient national forests outlined in the memorandum,” a USDA spokesperson wrote.

“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.

“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.”

While the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was included on the emergency lands map, Wilderness Act protections still apply, and the USDA said no logging is planned in designated wilderness areas.

Boosting timber production

Rollins’ memo authorizes several emergency actions, including salvage of dead or dying trees, harvest of trees damaged by natural disasters, sanitation harvest of disease- and insect-infested trees, removal of hazardous fuels, restoration of water sources and reforestation of fire-impacted areas.

“All of those things are important to us because we value healthy forests,” said retired forester Pete Aube. He was appointed chair of the Minnesota Forest Resources Council in 2019 by Gov. Tim Walz, though he did not comment on behalf of the council.

2024 was a particularly bad fire year with nearly 9 million acres burned in the U.S., though they were concentrated in the west. Those fires impacted communities, increased emissions and were costly to fight, Aube said, and logging is the tool that can make forests healthier.

“And even to the extent that forests may die of old age or even insects, we remove that fuel,” he said. “We remove that product, and put it to work in our economy, rather than have it turn into a fire or go down to the ground and create problems for forest health.”

Increasing timber production was heavily highlighted in the USDA’s news release and even more emphasized in an internal letter to regional foresters. Both point to President Donald Trump’s March 1 executive order to expand timber production by 25%.

The three-and-a-half-page letter from Chris French, Forest Service acting associate chief, said the Washington office has delivered “record accomplishments” for forest management in the last several years.

“Based on the guidance in the Executive Order, I am asking for additional integration to continue building on those successes and chart a new, completely seamless program,” French wrote.

The tone of this part of the internal letter diverges from Rollins’s memo, pointing to “heavy-handed federal policies” that have prevented full use of America’s “abundance of timber resources” and created a reliance on foreign producers.

“It is vital that we reverse these policies and increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security,” it states. “ ... This memo is intended to improve the internal management of the Department.”

Most of French's letter gives specific directions for boosting timber production, including using “innovative and efficient approaches” to meet the minimum requirements of environmental laws.

E&E News reported that French’s timber goal would fall short of the first Trump administration’s annual production goals and barely make a dent in the domestic supply.

Additionally, economic realities and government funding are generally bigger barriers than environmental rules, the outlet reported.

Federal funding cuts

If the memo is geared specifically toward reducing fires and making forests healthy, Aube said he thinks it’s important.

“The big concern about it — it's not whether this is a good thing to do, it's really how we get it done and all the resources there,” he said. “And with regard to Minnesota, I'm fully confident in the capability of our national forest — their leadership and staff — to put this into effect in a beneficial way.”

But Aube noted increasing output doesn’t come free.

“The opportunity is out there. The wood is out there,” he said. “... If they don’t have the resources, they’ll need to request them and receive them in order to implement the order.”

French’s letter appears to acknowledge the current cost-cutting culture of the federal government, noting the directives be taken “within current capacity constraints.”

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University of Minnesota

Frelich is concerned about staffing levels. It takes a lot of local knowledge to effectively manage a forest, he said, and firing staff in the Forest Service, which historically gets the best people in the industry, will not help things.

“If anything, that will slow everything down,” Frelich said. “And you can't micromanage national forests from Washington, D.C.”

Frelich is skeptical the memo will actually change much for Minnesota’s national forests. He said the timber harvested on national forest lands makes up around 8% of Minnesota’s total, so a 25% increase would be minor.

“There could be a slight positive [change for Northern Minnesota’s logging industry],” he said. “I mean, if you can find some stands that might not have otherwise been harvested. I’d expect it to be very small.”

But he is worried the Trump administration will try to justify logging old-growth forests in the name of fire prevention.

“Old growth in a lot of cases actually isn't very flammable, and you can't really justify logging the biggest trees to prevent fires,” he said.

“Because it's mostly the small diameter stuff, the brushy stuff and the smaller trees and all these small trees that have grown in in the last several decades to make a dense understory, that's what gives the fire most of its energy. But that's not what's valuable timber-wise.”