Emergency Forest Cutting Will Exacerbate Wildfires

Logging site in the Oregon Coast Range. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

On April 3rd, the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, issued an Emergency Order (EO) to accelerate logging on national forest lands. The alleged emergency is the presumed increase in wildfires across the West.

Unfortunately, most of the rationales for this “emergency” are based on flawed assumptions about “active” management (better known as logging) and the purported increase in wildfires.

The EO states that...