The president wants to circumvent environmental regulations to expand timber production, something sought by homebuilders and the construction industry.
||| FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES |||
President Trump has promised to “drill, baby, drill.” Now, he also wants to log.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump directed federal agencies to examine ways to bypass endangered species protections and other environmental regulations to ramp up timber production across 280 million acres of national forests and other public lands.
The move appears aimed at increasing domestic supply as the president considers tariffs on timber imports from Canada, Germany, Brazil and elsewhere. Environmental groups say increased logging would decimate American forests, pollute air and water and devastate wildlife habitats.
And because trees absorb and store carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, cutting them down releases it back into the atmosphere, adding to global warming.
“Trump’s order will unleash the chain saws and bulldozers on our federal forests,” said Randi Spivak, the public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. “Clearcutting these beautiful places will increase fire risk, drive species to extinction, pollute our rivers and streams, and destroy world-class recreation sites,” she said.
As part of his executive order, Mr. Trump directed the Commerce Department to investigate whether other countries were dumping lumber into American markets. The inquiry could result in tariffs on Canada, the top supplier of lumber into the United States. In 2021, the United States imported 46 percent of its forest products from Canada and 13 percent from China, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission. But the country is also a timber exporter, sending nearly $10 billion worth of forest products to Canada.
A companion directive signed by Mr. Trump said that “onerous” federal policies have prevented the United States from developing a sufficient timber supply, increasing housing and construction costs and threatening national security.
Mr. Trump called for the convening of a committee of high-level officials nicknamed the God Squad because it can override the landmark Endangered Species Act so that development or other projects can proceed even if they might result in an extinction.
The committee has rarely been convened since it was created, in 1978, through an amendment to the endangered species law to allow for action during emergencies like hurricanes and wildfires.
Mr. Trump also directed the agriculture and interior secretaries, as well as other officials, to look for ways to streamline regulations and reduce costs for timber production and forest management.
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