Since 2023, the U.S. Forest Service has approved or proposed 220,131 acres of controversial “emergency action” logging in Montana National Forests, despite a vast and growing body of peer reviewed science refuting agency assertions that such “fuel reduction” protects communities from wildfire.
The projects encompass the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Bitterroot, Flathead, Kootenai, and Lolo National Forests, and would involve construction or reconstruction of 580 miles of new logging roads.
Studies (both independent, peer reviewed and from U.S. Forest Service) show that “thinning”–often through massive clear cutting–heats up and dries out the forest microclimate, which can make fires start easier and burn more intensely—including igniting crown fires—while opening stands that let winds spread flames quicker to nearby communities, potentially overwhelming firefighters and evacuees.
“Many of these sales are utterly void of science, designed instead to pursue timber targets,” said Rick Bass, Executive Director of the Yaak Valley Forest Council. “Clearcutting, and particularly the eradication of our oldest, largest forests, hasten global warming. The agency is using ‘fire emergency’ to summon climate change, rather than to combat it.”
In January 2023, President Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack invoked a controversial “emergency action” authorization, under Section 40807 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, targeting up to 45 million acres of National Forests across the western U.S.
This so-called “emergency” logging, under the premise of “wildfire fuel reduction,” skirts the objection period of what’s known as the “predecisional administrative review process,” a legal challenge under federal law used by environmental advocates to illuminate and identify destructive projects.
900,368 acres of this “emergency action” logging and burning has been approved or proposed across fifteen National Forests in Montana, California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Washington.
While tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on industrial fire suppression along with this controversial logging in the name of “community protection,” only a tiny fraction of funding has gone to home hardening and pruning defensible space around structures, which are the only measures proven to protect communities from wildfire.
Eco-Integrity Alliance 