Trump’s Logging Order Unleashes Chainsaws on America’s National Forests

WASHINGTON— President Trump on Saturday signed an executive order aimed at undermining safeguards for endangered wildlife and bypassing other environmental protections to radically increase logging and road building on hundreds of millions of acres of national forests and other public lands.

Federal forests account for about one-third of the forested lands in the United States, and increased logging will wreak havoc on critical wildlife habitat, pollute the water and air, and increase fire risk by destroying older, more fire-resistant trees.

“Trump’s order will unleash the chainsaws and bulldozers on our beautiful, irreplaceable federal forests,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Clearcutting these amazing national treasures will increase fire risk, drive imperiled wildlife to extinction, pollute our rivers and streams, and destroy world-class recreation sites.”