The new Big Beautiful Bill is set to increase logging on federal lands by about 25% over the next few years.
The act calls for an increase of 250 million board feet of timber every year on U.S. Forest Service land and 20 million on Bureau of Land Management acres.
It codifies a Trump administration policy aimed at increasing domestic timber supply and making the country less reliant on foreign producers. While some environmental groups like the Wilderness Society have pushed back, calling this an attempt to “deepen the pockets of private industry,” timber producers have been more supportive.
“It provides some additional sideboards and conversations around staffing and funding,” explained Ben Wudtke, executive director of the Intermountain Forest Association, which represents timber producers in Wyoming, Colorado and South Dakota.
Wudtke and about 70 other industry representatives nationwide are less enthusiastic about the act mandating dozens of 20-year contracts, saying in a letter to lawmakers that this could create “negative, unintended consequences.”
In his region, Wudtke said the typical contract is three years.
“Mandating the long-term contracts sets them up for failure more than success,” Wudtke said.
He said the measure, which is aimed at creating more predictability for the industry, could help in some specific cases, but it will largely limit competition and take away flexibility.
Plus, the act directs all revenue from timber sales directly to the U.S. Treasury, instead of sending a portion to counties and federal agencies, which currently use those dollars to fund services like reforestation.
It’s unclear if those millions of dollars in sales will now be redistributed.
This all comes as the amount of timber sold in Colorado, Wyoming and other nearby states has dropped by about half over the last five years.
“The forests are seeing severe impacts. Communities are being threatened,” said Wudtke. “There is a lot of opportunity in this region to be doing more work on the landscape to reduce those risks to the forest.”
But former forest service leaders say more logging does not always mean more wildfire resilience.
“Just increasing timber production doesn’t necessarily address the fire problem,” said Mary Erickson, a longtime forest supervisor in Montana who recently retired, during a press conference.
Still, Wudtke said there are success stories around the region of timber sales and forest management saving habitats and communities.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
