Trump logging order sparks fears for US Southeast forests

• Trump mandates national logging increase
• Communities worry about recreation access, flooding
• Critics warn of climate, wildfire impact

WASHINGTON - Like many residents, Torry Nergart and his family live in the mountains of western North Carolina because they love being close to the forests, rivers and public lands.

That is making them feel particularly protective since President Donald Trump last month ordered a major boost to U.S. timber production, seeking to strip regulations and speed up approval.

Within hours of the orders being issued, Nergart and hundreds of other people gathered in the town of Brevard, at the entrance to the half-million-acre Pisgah National Forest, to share their concerns.

“It touches almost every element of life and culture here," Nergart told Context. "Everyone has a stake."

Worries about the impacts on recreation, conservation, sedimentation and flooding raise questions of what could happen to the local economy, he added.

“This whole economy has grown up around this,” Nergart said.

Trump’s orders declare reliance on timber imports a threat to national security and mandate an increase in U.S. logging production, claiming past federal policies have stymied job creation, boosted wildfire risk and raised construction costs.

Following up, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared an “emergency situation” in more than 112 million acres of national forests and directed the U.S. Forest Service to boost timber production by 25%.

The Forest Service will “streamline forest management efforts, reduce burdensome regulations, and grow partnerships to support economic growth and sustainability,” an agency spokesperson said in an email.

The issue is caught up in the focus on tariffs by the administration, which has indicated it would seek to raise levies to more than 34% on Canadian lumber.

Western North Carolina has a long history of logging, but residents worry this development could upend the current system in favor of speed.

“Imagining a world where there are fewer or no regulations being followed, ... the only outcome I could see would be degraded water quality, wildlife habitat and damage to recreational infrastructure,” said Josh Kelly, regional forests program director with MountainTrue, a nonprofit in Asheville, North Carolina.

MountainTrue was created in the 1980s amid local opposition to expanded logging on public lands, and Kelly foresees a similar swing in public sentiment.

Some rural counties may want to see increased production, "but if they do it this quickly, it’s going to cause a backlash,” he said.

“You won’t find anything more popular in this region than public land.”

Major producer

Much of the federally owned land in the United States is in the West, where two-thirds of forest lands in some states are government controlled, said David Wear, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a think tank.

U.S. timber production was high from the 1960s to the early 1990s, when it plummeted due to new environmental regulations and other factors.

The change prompted much of the logging business to switch to private lands in the Southeast.

While logging levels dropped, the U.S. remains among the world’s largest producers and consumers of timber, Wear said.

Yet many of the sawmills and other infrastructure required to handle increased production have closed, and rebuilding would take years, he added.

Industry groups have welcomed the executive orders, with the American Forest Resource Council saying it was a step towards economic revitalisation amid “a federal forest health and wildfire crisis” and industry job losses.

But the economic impact of logged vs. conserved forests is questionable, said Danna Smith, executive director of the nonprofit Dogwood Alliance, which works on forest issues.

The U.S. wood industry provides 750,000 jobs, according to the White House, compared with some 5 million in outdoor recreation.

Plus, forests serve a far broader function, Smith said.

“Any time you increase logging, you’re going to increase carbon emissions and further degrade ecological services in the form of climate resiliency, water control, flood control, natural air conditioning,” she said.

In North Carolina, logging is already the third-leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions, she said. In Oregon, it is the top cause.

Fire and flood

The executive orders and implementation cite a focus on reducing wildfires and safeguarding at-risk communities.

But wildfire scientist Chad Hanson, director of the nonprofit John Muir Project, said this viewpoint flies in the face of years of scientific findings.

“Claiming that removing millions of trees somehow will curb wildfires and therefore communities don’t have to worry, that approach is unconscionably dangerous … based on the evidence we have,” he said.

In fact, thinning has been found to dry out forests and allow winds to spread fires more easily, he said.

Communities also fear logging’s effects on flooding.

“Everywhere we’ve been in the South, people have said flooding is worse as the logging increases,” said Rev. Leo Woodberry, a pastor in Florence, South Carolina and head of the New Alpha Community Development Corp., a nonprofit that works on environmental health.

The risk is particularly high for poor and Black communities often located in low-lying areas, he said.

“At the very least, we should be restricting the amount of logging that can take place in areas where they know that flooding increases," Woodberry said.