Grand Teton National Park bark beetle mortality
Massive National Forests Logging Threat – Bad Decisions and Bad Math of this Current Illegitimate Administration
This illegitimate administration has vowed to increase US National Forest timber production by 59% to 112 million acres. Really? Their USDA Emergency Situation Memorandum (Executive Order (EO) 14225, Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production, March 1, 2025) tells us,
“The Forest Service manages 144 million forested acres in 43 States. Forest plans identify
approximately 43 million acres suitable for timber production.”
“To address this crisis, I [the president] am making an Emergency Situation Determination (ESD)
under section 40807 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). This ESD
encompasses 66,940,000 acres of NFS lands rated as very high or high wildfire risk that
are hereby determined to be an emergency situation as defined by IIJA. In addition, I
have determined that the 78,800,000 acres of NFS lands designated under Section 602 of
the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA), that are experiencing declining forest health;
at risk of experiencing substantially increased tree mortality over the next 15 years [ from
time of designation] from insect and disease infestation; or containing hazard trees posing
an imminent risk to public health, infrastructure, and safety, are an emergency situation
as defined in the IIJA. There are approximately 33,846,000 acres of NFS lands which
overlap between wildfire and insect and disease risk. In total, this ESD designates
112,646,000 acres of NFS lands as an IIJA emergency situation, which is 59 percent of
all NFS lands.”
First… 112 million acres proposed to be opened to logging is 78 percent of the 144 million acres of National forests. Not 59%. Strike one.
Second… 43 million acres are suitable for logging, only 33 percent of national forests. Strike 2.
Third… This Order proposes to harvest 112 million acres where only 43 million acres of US National Forest are suitable for logging. Strike 3.
Fourth… The Emergency Situation Memorandum tells us that fire is a big concern and that management strategies of thinning and removals is the solution. This was true before our climate changed into something that is now allowing almost all major wildland forest fires to be extreme with temperatures 400 degrees hotter than in our old climate, where extreme fire has increased 11 times (1,100 percent) over the global average in our new climate (Cunningham 2024). Forest regeneration failure after extreme fire has doubled, meaning that forest regrowth after fire has already begun to fail (and most likely after insect and disease mortality too). Strike 4…
They just keep swinging and missing. Importantly in this discussion, is the reality that we have delayed action on climate pollution for too long with the results that our forests are now degrading, some are now not regenerating after catastrophe, and the catastrophes are increasing in number and extremeness. What this means is that the forests we have right now will be the forests of our future, minus those that are destroyed by warming-caused mortality in the meantime, from forest catastrophes related to warming-caused fire, insects, disease, and water stress. Until we restore our climate like Sierra Club’s first of its kind restoration policy of limiting warming to 1 degree C above normal, or cooling our climate back to within the evolutionary boundaries of our Earth’s systems also known as the natural variation of our old climate; until we restore our climate, ecological degradation related to warming effects does not self-restore. What we have in store for our future, until we restore our climate, is that climate change effects-caused degradation feeds back upon itself creating more degradation, even if we halted all warming this instant.
Below the illegitimate Emergency Situation Memorandum are summaries of seven findings on forest regeneration failure due to warming effects.
USDA Emergency Situation Memorandum… Increasing Timber Production and Designating An Emergency Situation on National Forest System Lands, USDA, Secretary’s Memorandum 1078-006, April 3, 2025
https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/sm-1078-006.pdf
Cunningham 2024… Extreme fire has increased 11 times (1,100 percent) over the global average in our new climate.
Cunningham et al., Increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth, Nature Ecology and Evolution, June 24, 2024.
(Paywall) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02452-2
Phys.org Review – https://phys.org/news/2024-06-extreme-wildfires-years-science.html
400 Degrees Hotter, Cal Fire… Wildfires are burning 400 degrees F hotter because of drier fuels. “The infernos bellowed by those winds once reached a maximum temperature of 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, Cal Fire’s Angie Lottes says; now they reach 2,100 degrees, hot enough to turn the silica in the soil into glass.”
Wallace-Wells, Los Angeles Fire Season Is Beginning Again. And It Will Never End. A bulletin from our climate future.
By David Wallace-Wells, NYMag, May 12, 2019.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/los-angeles-fire-season-will-never-end.html
Hill 2023, Greater than 20 percent regeneration failure after fire… Increased regeneration failure and wildfire risk from warming across the Sierra Nevada… Warming has created regeneration failure and a greater risk of wildfire across up to 19.5 percent of the Sierra Nevada. In this study that compared assumed stable forest conditions from 1915 to 1955, a mismatch in climate and forest regeneration for forest stability was found compared to the period 2000 to 2022. This mismatch is degrading or eliminating regeneration or the ability of sapling trees to survive because of water stress in the warmed environment at lower elevation areas along the western slope of the Sierras. Of most importance in this study, the comparison was made between the average conditions from 1915 to 1955 and 2000 to 2022. Because it is quite likely that the period 2000 to 2022 has seen more warming later rather than sooner during this period, the 19.5 percent mismatch is biased low or is understated.
Full – Hill et al., Low-elevation conifers in California’s Sierra Nevada are out of equilibrium with climate, PNAS, February 28, 2023.
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article-pdf/2/2/pgad004/49406200/pgad004.pdf
Press Release – Jordan, Stanford-led study reveals a fifth of California’s Sierra Nevada conifer forests are stranded in habitats that have grown too warm for them, Stanford, February 28, 2023.
https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2023/02/28/zombie-forests/
Coop 2020 – An era when prefire forests may not return… “Changing disturbance regimes and climate can overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity fire, forest recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer and drier postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A potential outcome of the loss of resilience is the conversion of the prefire forest to a different forest type or nonforest vegetation. Conversion implies major, extensive, and enduring changes in dominant species, life forms, or functions, with impacts on ecosystem services. In the present article, we synthesize a growing body of evidence of fire-driven conversion and our understanding of its causes across western North America. We assess our capacity to predict conversion and highlight important uncertainties. Increasing forest vulnerability to changing fire activity and climate compels shifts in management approaches, and we propose key themes for applied research coproduced by scientists and managers to support decision-making in an era when the prefire forest may not return.”
Coop et al., Wildfire Driven Forest Conversion in Western North American Landscapes, BioScience, July 1, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaa061
Davis 2019 – Forests Exceed Climate Change Regeneration Threshold Leading to Non-forested States… The take-away, “In areas that have crossed climatic thresholds for regeneration, stand-replacing fires may result in abrupt ecosystem transitions to nonforest states.” The authors “examine[d] the relationship between annual climate and postfire tree regeneration of two dominant, low-elevation conifers (ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir) using annually resolved establishment dates from 2,935 destructively sampled trees from 33 wildfires across four regions in the western United States… [They] demonstrate[d] that … forests of the western United States have crossed a critical climate threshold for postfire tree regeneration. [They] found abrupt declines in modeled annual recruitment probability in the 1990s for both species and across all regions. Annual rates of tree regeneration exhibited strongly nonlinear relationships with annual climate conditions, with distinct threshold responses to summer VPD [humidity], soil moisture, and maximum surface temperatures. Across the study region, seasonal to annual climate conditions from the early 1990s through 2015 have crossed these climate thresholds at the majority of sites. [Their] findings suggest that many low elevation mixed conifer forests in the western United States have already crossed climatic thresholds beyond which the climate is unsuitable for regeneration. The nonlinear relationships between annual climate and regeneration observed in this study are likely not unique to these two species.”
Davis et al., Wildfires and climate change push low-elevation forests across a critical climate threshold for tree regeneration, PNAS, March 26, 2019.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/13/6193
Stevens-Rumann 2017 – One third of burned Western US forests are not regenerating at all… Conclusion, “Significantly less tree regeneration is occurring after wildfires in the start of 21st century compared to the end of the 20th century, and key drivers of this change were warmer and drier mean climatic conditions. Our findings demonstrate the increased vulnerability of both dry and moist forests to climate-induced regeneration failures following wildfires. The lack of regeneration indicates either substantially longer periods of forest recovery to pre-fire tree densities, or potential shifts to lower density forests or non-forest cover types after 21st-century wildfires… Our results suggest that predicted shifts from forest to non-forested vegetation may be underway, expedited by fire disturbances [and] that short post-fire periods of wetter climate that have favoured tree regeneration in the past may not occur frequently enough to facilitate tree regeneration in the future, across a broad region and multiple forest types in the Rocky Mountains… Our results suggest a high likelihood that future wildfires will facilitate shifts to lower density forest or non-forested states under a warming climate.”
Data, “For sites burned at the end of the 20th century vs. the first decade of the 21st century, the proportion of sites meeting or exceeding pre-fire tree densities (e.g. recruitment threshold of 100%) decreased by nearly half (from 70 to 46%) and the percentage of sites experiencing no post-fire tree regeneration nearly doubled (from 19 to 32%)… This negative relationship demonstrates the potential increased vulnerability and lack of resilience on hotter and drier sites, or of dry forest species, to climate warming… Tree seedlings may establish in response to short-term anomalous wetter periods in the future, but our results highlight that such conditions have become significantly less common since 2000, and they are expected to be less likely in the future… Further, persistent or long-lasting vegetation changes following wildfires have been observed worldwide.” … Sevenens-Rumann 2017 found a significant decrease in tree regeneration in post fire landscapes in the last 15 years (since 2015) vs. the previous 15 years. For fires that burned in the early 21st century, regeneration tree density decreased by nearly half, and sites experiencing no post-fire regeneration nearly doubled, over fires that burned at the end of the 20th century.
From the abstract, “Forest resilience to climate change is a global concern given the potential effects of increased disturbance activity, warming temperatures and increased moisture stress on plants. We used a multi-regional dataset of 1485 sites across 52 wildfires from the US Rocky Mountains to ask if and how changing climate over the last several decades impacted post-fire tree regeneration, a key indicator of forest resilience. Results highlight significant decreases in tree regeneration in the 21st century. Annual moisture deficits were significantly greater from 2000 to 2015 as compared to 1985–1999, suggesting increasingly unfavourable post-fire growing conditions, corresponding to significantly lower seedling densities and increased regeneration failure. Dry forests that already occur at the edge of their climatic tolerance are most prone to conversion to non-forests after wildfires. Major climate-induced reduction in forest density and extent has important consequences for a myriad of ecosystem services now and in the future.”
Stevens-Rumann et al., Evidence for declining forest resilience to wildfires under climate, Ecology Letters, December 12, 2017.
(Paywall) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.12889
Full (Researchgate free account required)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Monica_Rother/publication/321753770_Evidence_for_declining_forest_resilience_to_wildfires_under_climate_change/links/5a315ae90f7e9b2a284cea8f/Evidence-for-declining-forest-resilience-to-wildfires-under-climate-change.pdf
Press Release, University of Montana –
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-12/tuom-sfr121317.php
Westerling 2016 – Wildfire season increased 60 percent, burn time has increased 800 percent, burned area increased 1,271 percent, human-caused ignition has played a very small role in increasing wildfire trends…
Westerling, Increasing western US forest wildfire activity, sensitivity to changes in the timing of spring, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, June 15, 2016, Table 2.
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1696/20150178