Weekly Column: A New Direction On Improving Forest Health

The reality of living in the West is the opportunities of our warmer seasons are often dulled by smoke-filled skies and the threat of wildfires. But, while the Trump Administration’s forest health reforms and additional legislative reforms from Congress will take time to implement and enact, the White House and Congress are working together to ramp up active forest health—creating a vastly different federal forest policy environment compared to last year.

Idaho experienced a significantly bad fire year in 2024 with approximately one-million acres burned from more than 1,400 fires statewide. Devastating wildfires in Los Angeles at the beginning of 2025, the Grand Canyon’s North Rim fire and currently many others burning across Idaho and the West have been motivating factors for President Trump and Congress to take action to reduce the threat of wildfires by removing barriers to forest health projects and improving coordination to jointly use expertise and resources at all levels.

On March 1, 2025, the Trump Administration issued an Executive Order to expand American timber production, recognizing paper, bioenergy and other wood products are critical for construction, and energy production and “forest management and wildfire risk reduction projects can save American lives and communities.” Through the directive, the President called on the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Secretary of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to update guidance to facilitate increased timber production and sound forest management, reduce time to deliver timber and decrease timber supply uncertainty. Tools include Good Neighbor Authority and stewardship contracting. The President’s Executive Order also called for streamlined permitting to accelerate timber production.

Furthering the Executive Order, on April 3, 2025, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins issued a Secretary’s Memorandum detailing the actions she is directing the U.S. Forest Service to take to help the agency mitigate risk and protect public health, safety and critical infrastructure. In addition to these executive actions, Congress has already passed legislation signed into law addressing these issues. Forestry provisions included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act include requirements the Forest Service sell an additional 250 million board feet (MMBF) of timber each fiscal year and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) an additional 20 MMBF each fiscal year above each agency’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 timber sale accomplishment level.

I am a long-time proponent of Good Neighbor Authority and stewardship contracting, as these programs have expanded the federal government’s ability to partner with state foresters and private entities on forest restoration, wildfire risk reduction and wildlife habitat improvements. I have sponsored and supported legislation to expand and extend Good Neighbor Authority and stewardship contracting. Likewise, I have backed other pieces of legislation that have also been included in the Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA) that is being advanced in this Congress. My legislation and a number of other helpful reforms in FOFA include provisions to:

• Reauthorize the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program;
• Prioritize watershed projects that manage risks from drought, wildfire and climate change, enhance water quality and supply, and support ecological restoration;
• Address the disastrous Cottonwood decision by better enabling federal land managers to undertake important wildfire restoration activities;
• Increase the acreage limit of categorical exclusions for wildfire resilience projects, fuel breaks and insect and disease projects from 3,000 acres to 10,000 acres;
• Increase allowances for vegetation/fuel treatments in electric transmission rights of way;
• Create new categorical exclusion for hazardous tree removal near roads, trails and recreation sites; and
• Provide additional litigation reforms beyond the Cottonwood fix.

In January, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of FOFA, and hearings to discuss this legislation have been held in the Senate. As FOFA and other active forest management reforms are considered as part of this much-needed debate in Congress, I will continue to work to ensure federal policy best enables the long-term health of public lands to help prevent wildfires and back those protecting our communities from wildfires.

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