SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.30.2025
Felon Trump’s attempt to open 59M acres of land to logging will severely impact California. There are 20 national forests in the State encompassing 4.4M acres.
The San Francisco Chronicle took a walk through the forest of bureaucratic procedure which will be required. When it’s all over the Felon Trump’s effort to destroy these national irreplaceable treasures may fail.
The powerful environmental lobby is ready.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 6.26.2025
“Logging, that’s what this is about,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “They don’t like anything that puts a stop to commercialization and exploitation. … Stripping protections from these last unfragmented national forests risks our drinking water, plants, animals and some of America’s most beautiful wild places.”
Map: Emma Stiefel • Source: United States Forest Service; PAD-US; California State Parks
In California, 4.4 million acres across 20 national forests are protected by the rule, according to the Forest Service. It’s nearly 5% of the state’s total lands and includes stretches of such heavily visited forests as the Tahoe, Sequoia, Sierra, Stanislaus and Inyo.
Many of the spots that are protected border wilderness areas and national parks.
The Trump administration is seeking to undo a 25-year-old rule that shields nearly a third of U.S. Forest Service lands from roads and logging, including large swaths of California, notably areas near Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and Giant Sequoia National Monument.
The announcement of the repeal kicks off an administrative process that requires a technical review of what the impact would be as well as inviting public comment. This could take months, a year or even longer. If the rule is changed or eliminated, litigation will almost certainly follow.
Environmentalists insist that little good will come of revoking the rule. They say the Trump administration’s promotion of the action as a fire prevention measure is simply propaganda.
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