The Chainsaw Pipeline: H.R. 1's Backdoor Attack on Public Lands and Biodiversity - Even Without the Sell-Offs
While some of the most extreme public sell-off provisions were stripped from H.R. 1, buried within the bill are provisions for a massive expansion of extractive and industry activity
across public lands. Beneath the slogans and rhetoric is a suite of policies that would accelerate habitat destruction, strip public oversight, and weaken species protections at a time when biodiversity is already in crisis. Here’s a break down of the most alarming sections (so far):
Section 50301: Logging on Autopilot
Mandated selling of more trees to the timber industry, long-term logging contracts, and no mention of biodiversity.
While the land itself is no longer on the auction block, this section requires the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to increase the amount of timber sold every year for the next 9 years, by at least 250 million board feet annually from National Forests, and 20 million board feet annually from BLM lands. That’s a minimum of 2.5 billion board feet pushed into the chainsaw pipeline by 2034 from National Forests alone.
If the term board feet doesn’t mean anything to you, you are not alone, so let’s break it down: A 20-inch diameter tree contains approximately 250 board feet of timber (the part of the tree trunk that can be turned into 2” x 4” and other lumber). Given that not all trees are the same size, and that the largest trees will be targeted, an increase of 250 million board feet per year means that between 500,000 and 1,000,000 trees will be sold into the chainsaw pipeline each year! This is in addition to the number of trees that are currently being sold, cut and removed across our public forests. By the end of this 9 year period, as many as 9,000,000 additional trees on our national forests could be contracted for death by chainsaw, a disaster for species protection and ecosystem function.
Even more concerning is that the Forest Service must lock in at least 40 long-term timber sale contracts, each lasting at least 20 years. This opens the door for logging companies to buy up contracts and sit on large areas of forest and then come back to cut years or even decades later, when on the ground circumstances have changed, and whatever public comment period was held has long since expired, and there will be few avenues to be able to stop the destruction. These contracts and the increases in the amount of timber sold are mandatory, limited only be whether a specific forest plan sets a cap on annual timber sold — and many do not. It is anyone’s guess how the courts will interpret a conflict between this new board foot requirement, long term contracts, and environmental harm. But it is likely that, as often happens when Nature gets in the way of profit, forest ecosystems and biodiversity will be on the losing end.
Bottom line: this provision hardwires logging well into the future with no meaningful consideration for wildlife, climate, or ecological recovery. It prioritizes board feet over biodiversity.
More to come in part two of this series.
In signal and vigilance,
Bekah
 | A guest post by
|
I live in Southwest Washington State, and the BLM recently did a "timber sale" on the land adjoining mine. I cried for a week. The result looks post-apocalyptic, with piles of logs and debris scattered about a scraped and brutalized landscape.
To be clear, what was there previously was not exactly healthy forest. It had been clearcut some years before and the trees were too close together and unhealthy. But at least it was trying to recover, and I know there were animals, birds and insects et cetera, living in it… with dens, nests, and young.
The BLM sent me a letter about a year before, to tell me this would be happening… all couched in legalese. It talked about how there would be care taken to protect watersheds, and environmental and esthetic considerations. I expect they have adhered to the letter of the law. This means they left an occasional tree standing in the middle of all that devastation, and there are a couple of areas where they left trees, where I suspect there might be springs. However, they harvested trees from slopes that were steeper than 45°. And in our current climate situation, I know all that land is at serious risk of erosion and landslides. There also used to be a lumber road to walk on… now it's just a jumbled ruin.
I've been thinking about writing them a letter, to at least let them know that I am not at all happy with what they did. And that my neighbors are not happy, either. I don't think it will make any difference, but at least I will have said it. If my town (Longview) had a paper, I would write a letter to the editor… but they only have a weekly paper, to promote local activities and tourism. And this IS a lumbertown.
🤬🤬