Forests Are Still on the Chopping Block During Shutdown Season

Shutdown season may freeze federal employees’ pay, but it does nothing to stop logging agendas and forest destruction as both remain on the fast track, exposing where the true priorities lie.

Many federal employees are furloughed, offices sit empty, and essential government functions grind to a halt. Security and stability for ordinary Americans hang in the balance. Yet, under Trump’s executive order, logging staff on national forests and other federal public lands are treated as “essential” – deemed “critical to our nation’s well-being” – so timber operations push forward. Meanwhile, Congress is not technically in session and most legislators aren’t actively working for the public. If anyone’s pay should be suspended during a shutdown, it’s our lawmakers’.

Even more absurd, calling staff of logging and management operations “critical to the nation’s well-being” is laughable. In what sense? Timber subsidies and forest extraction do not protect communities. They do not strengthen ecosystems. They do not preserve wildlife. They perpetuate the false narrative that public forests exist to be pillaged, with taxpayer subsidies, under the ruse of fire management. By crowning logging as ‘critical’ to our well-being, these policies sideline the natural processes that actually sustain forests’ and our well-being. Natural fire cycles, which have sustained and regenerated forests far longer than any of our lifetimes and beyond, are then maligned and vilified.

This is a moment that lays bare the misaligned priorities in Washington. Government shutdowns reveal more than stalled operations; they reveal what, and who, is truly valued by politicians. People’s livelihoods? Secondary. Forests and wildlife? Relegated for extraction. Subsidized logging activities? Essential. Bills to destroy forests? Pushed forward.

The Senate Agriculture Committee will mark up the “Fix Our Forests Act” (FOFA), S. 1462, this coming Tuesday, October 21st. This is a bill that fast-tracks large-scale logging—including in mature and old-growth forests—by gutting core environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act. It expands industry loopholes, blocks public oversight and participation, and allows commercial logging under vague “emergency” declarations. Subsidies continue, exemptions remain, and the false messaging persists: logging = safety; forests = fuel. But the science doesn’t concur. Logging tears apart the landscape, removing natural wind breaks and buffers and fragmenting ecosystems, leaving forests less resilient and more vulnerable to hot, dry, and windy weather conditions that can exacerbate wildfire behavior, putting nearby communities at greater risk of urban wildfire.

The FOFA logging bill prioritizes subsidizing logging over true fire safety, putting public lands and communities at risk and revealing how systems meant to protect both can be bent to serve extraction and economic interests. The decision to hold a hearing on FOFA during a government shutdown elevates timber, industry, and political optics above the protection of the environment and local communities, and the integrity of our forests.

Congress should be called out for their asinine priorities during a government shutdown. Tell your Senators on the Agriculture Committee to oppose FOFA. Call the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and leave a message for them. You can also send a letter to your Senators through our action alert and use the letter as a script for your phone call or voicemail. Let Congress know we won’t stand by while the system prioritizes logging industry profits over public good. Insist on real action and unflinching accountability, not lip service to the environment under a charade of “essential work.”

Pondering priorities,
Bekah