200 Lawyers
15 Offices
620 Cases
Earthjustice goes to court for our planet.
We’re here because the earth needs a good lawyer.
New Executive Order Aims to Put Our Federal Forests Up for Sale
March 27, 2025
President Trump issued an executive order that threatens to unleash a logging bonanza on our cherished trees. This order sets the gears in motion for the administration to massively increase logging and also aims to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
Laws control how our federal public forests are managed for people and wildlife, and not just for private timber companies. No executive order can replace these laws. You can help protect trees and the web of life that depends on them by letting the Trump administration know you oppose any attacks on our forests.
What happened:
- The executive order directs the Interior Department and the Agriculture Department, agencies that manage our federal lands, to drastically increase timber harvests on federal forests — mainly by eliminating restrictions on the logging industry.
- Before the agencies can greenlight logging projects, they are required under federal law to analyze how the projects will impact endangered species — but this order tells them to look for ways to bypass this requirement. It also calls for reassessing the role of tribal contracts.
- The administration uses scare tactics to rationalize this industry handout. The order claims without evidence that environmental protections should be weakened due to “timber supply uncertainty” that “threatens” national security, and it erroneously equates logging with wildfire mitigation.
- The Trump administration has made it clear that it sees our public forests only as trees to be cut down and sold. This executive order is one of many tactics the administration is using to put our forests up for sale, including appointing a timber industry executive to oversee the Forest Service.
- Congress is now considering an industry-backed bill that uses wildfire mitigation as a cover for opening more forests to logging. In truth, mature and old-growth trees make forests more resilient to wildfires: they have thicker, less flammable bark, higher branches, and other adaptations that make them more fire-resistant than their younger counterparts. Stands of older trees create cooler temperatures and increase the overall humidity around them, adding moisture to forests and making them burn more slowly.
Why we must protect our nation’s forests:
- Increasing timber production means cutting down more big, old trees — because the biggest trees will produce the most lumber. Once an old-growth tree is cut and sold, it will take longer than most human lifetimes to replace it.
- Old-growth and mature forests provide homes for wildlife, filter drinking water, create recreational opportunities, and absorb and store carbon — all processes that help us fight climate change. Chopping them down means we lose those benefits. Old forests are also the most resilient to wildfire, meaning taking a chainsaw to them will actually put more communities in danger.
- As we face climate change, we need these natural allies who filter the air we breathe and are resilient to wildfires. Our lives will be less rich, and our planet will be less livable, without our oldest forests.
We will challenge the administration if they violate federal law.
- There are real federal laws — like the National Forest Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act — that make sure our federal public forests are managed for people and wildlife, and not just for private timber companies. No executive order can replace these laws.
- If the Trump administration breaks federal law to illegally hold timber sales, we will fight them in court.
Logging operations in the Coconino National Forest in Arizona. President Trump issued an executive order that seeks to increase logging in the national forest system and other federal lands. (Randi Shaffer / USDA Forest Service)