An All-Out Attack on our Forests and Wildlife (Once it’s gone…)

Christopher Rufo may be the bane of diversity, inclusion and all things ”woke,” but this Seattle expatriate delivers a timely warning of right-wing schemes to sell off public lands — our lands. “Nobody is going to build ‘affordable housing’ deep in the Olympic Peninsula, which is one of the most beautiful places in the country,” Rufo posted recently. “I want my kids hiking, camping, and fishing on those lands, not selling them for some tax-credit scam.”

Rufo delivers a more on-target message than many of the hyperbole-filled, send-us-money messages from national environmental groups. He’s right: We need to get directly involved in protecting lands that belong to us, lands that make western North America a livable, not-yet-used-up stretch of the planet.

The “shock and awe” attack strategy of the Trump Administration is being deployed against our 160-million-acre national forest system. The administration declared this week that it is rolling back the Roadless Rule, the Clinton Administration action that barred logging and road construction on 58 million acres of America’s national forests.

In a mantra coined by our then-Gov. Dan Evans, repeated this week by Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, once wildlands and forests are lost, “they are lost forever.”  A lot is already lost: our national forests are crisscrossed by 375,000 miles of roads.

The biggest potential impact is in the Tongass National Forest, which takes in most of Southeast Alaska. Nine million acres of land, or 15,000 square miles, would be thrown open to bulldozers and chain saws.

The forests of the Tongass once fed giant, polluting pulp mills in Sitka and Ketchikan. Admiralty Island, home to the globe’s densest grizzly population, was to support a third mill in Juneau. The U.S. Forest Service received about four cents in income for every dollar spent laying out logging roads. It sold 800-year-old trees, as Tim Egan reported in The New York Times, for the price of a Big Mac.

The mills were shut down, victims of economics and the mess they had generated. The Alaska Panhandle economy is now tree friendly, anchored to tourism and fisheries. In her book Salmon in the Trees, Whidbey-based photojournalist Amy Gulick depicts how ancient forests shade salmon habitat while spawning fish who die supply nutrients to the forest.

“This isn’t about taking sides, it’s about taking care of all of us,” Gulick explains. “Described as ‘the lungs of North America,’ the Tongass is home to an abundance of salmon, bears, bald eagles, humpback whales, and the world’s largest reserves of old growth coastal temperate rain forest.”

In the “lower 48,” there is increased recognition that trees have standing. Forests hold runoff, allow for measured snow melt, and sustain outdoor recreation. Seattle-based REI has 12 million members in the American West. Who doesn’t appreciate this? A president who drives his golf cart on pristine greens and the functionaries of the Heritage Institute, DOGE slashers and Republican senators in the pockets of the mining and timber industries.

In my Bellingham boyhood, there weren’t many people on trails at Mt. Baker, except into Kulshan Cabin from which climbing parties would leave in wee hours of the morning. Down in Glacier, however, district ranger Ross Files had both budget and bodies to maintain a network of trails, campgrounds, and lookouts laid out in the 1930s by Civilian Conservation Corps crews.

Nowadays, folks from growing cities flock to popular trails. Half-mile parking backups are a feature of such popular trailheads as Maple Pass on the North Cascades Highway and Ingalls Lake north of Cle Elum, particularly when larch needles turn gold. But far fewer trails get maintained because there is virtually no budget. The recreation infrastructure created in the Great Depression cannot be maintained, despite being in vastly more prosperous times.

“The Forest Service has had a skeleton crew the last two decades. Cutting more staff would destroy it,” said Gary Paull, longtime trails and recreation director for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, who spent his winters organizing and scheduling volunteer work crews. Paull retired a few years back, but they did not fill his position.

The Trump Administration has set out to put it all together. Freezing funds makes it impossible to fill positions that come vacant. If seasonal workers are brought on, or hiker and horse clubs turn out volunteer crews, they’ll find that supervisors have been fired, as well as perhaps contract administrators. Need supplies to repair a trail bridge? No horse packer hired.

Of course, the dream of Sagebrush Rebels and reactionaries has long been to sell off public lands. Bidding to get a chainsaw under the tent, Senate Republicans crafted the sale of 2-3 million acres — taking national forests and Bureau of Land Management holdings — as part of Trump’s “Big Beautiful” budget reconciliation bill. Bill language made vast tracts totaling 250 million acres available for choosing in the selloff. The Senate parliamentarian has ruled the provision not germane to the reconciliation bill.

The state of Utah has been a driving force, seeking to grab 500,000 acres of federal land. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has gone back to the drawing board with a pared-down version that would limit the selloff of BLM lands to within five miles of population centers.

As Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, points out, lands in the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area and Methow Valley would still be eligible for sale. So will several million acres of BLM land in Oregon, such as the wonderful Owyhee River and its canyons. Red Rock Canyon, at the edge of Las Vegas, is likewise vulnerable.

When Congress voted to create a 393,000-acre Alpine Lakes Wilderness, between Stevens and Snoqualmie Passes, it required federal acquisition of 86,500 acres of private holdings intermingled with national forest lands. The so-called checkerboard ownership pattern is a legacy of one of America’s great corporate giveaways to railroads, the 1864 Northern Pacific Land Grant.

The Forest Service has been consolidating its holdings and forest ecosystems in recent years. Somehow, navigating in a Republican-run Senate, Cantwell was able to lock in authorization and money for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which buys threatened wildlands and recreation properties. Numerous blue heron rookeries have the Senator to thank, and so do hikers encountering abandoned mining properties high in the Cascades.

Are we going to turn around and throw it all away? For instance, the upper Methow and spectacular environs around Washington Pass, hiking and climbing recreation country left out of the North Cascades National Park complex and denied wilderness designation. Would it be purchased by speculators? “I see this as an opportunity for bad actors to purchase what they know to be valuable properties, and then extort the federal government into repurchasing them,” said Gary Paull.

Already, in Idaho and Montana, controversies have sprung up, with wealthy owners erecting gates on their holdings, thereby blocking access to fishing streams and hunting grounds on public lands. The danger is that pattern happening on a big scale. The cost to recreation opportunities, to the outdoor recreation economy and to future generations is incalculable.

Cities, too, depend on public lands. About 40 percent of Boise’s water is supplied by nearby federal land. Fast-growing Idaho has acted on its own to put nearby environs in public ownership. “The system that our residents have created that’s right up against our town core is at risk. These lands shape our communities,” said Boise Mayor Lauren McLean.

But the Trump Administration is looking at ways to strip national monument designations. As to selling off public lands, our lands, we hear this from Sen. Lee: “I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move forward.”

Geez. A GOP president, Theodore Roosevelt, created national forests and designated national monuments, protecting lands that became Grand Canyon and Olympic National Parks. Presidents Taft, Coolidge, and Hoover, hardly greenies, set aside scenic jewels in the Southwest.

Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., chairs a Republican group that is mouthpiece for industrial users of the federal domain. “The Public Lands Caucus is committed to protecting access to public lands and ensuring they are preserved for future generations,” Newhouse said this week. Yet, Newhouse regularly caves and votes for the Trump agenda. Trump has endorsed MAGA challengers in Newhouse races.

This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.