EUGENE, Ore.- President Trump is widely expected to soon open up some 44 million acres of the country's last pristine national forests in a move he says will bring timber jobs back to struggling small towns and help prevent wildfires in overgrown lands.Trump signaled the move with executive actions last year aimed at dramatically boosting timber sales on U.S.
Forest Service land and reversing the agency's 25-year-old Roadless Rule, which blocked most new logging on undeveloped national forestlands.Today with the formal repeal of the Roadless Rule rule expected early next year, the picture on the ground in timber country looks messier.Those who make a living in the forests say the problems are much bigger than access to more trees."I'm not saying these EOs [Executive Orders] are useless, they set the tone," says Sean Smith, CEO of the family owned Starfire Lumber in Cottage Grove, Ore.Smith, standing in a bustling lumber yard with the sawmill cranking behind four story high stacks of freshly cut timber, says the industry has more pressing challenges now, starting with the record high price of diesel fuel.
Economists largely blame that on Trump's war with Iran.And then there's inflation, which is driving up the costs of just about everything."Steel, you know, we have to buy sawblades, we have to buy ball bearings," Smith says.
"We have to buy a million different parts to keep this mouse trap going."So repealing the Roadless Rule - which has largely banned new road building and logging projects on some 44 million acres of pristine national forests since 2001 - is lower on the priority list.Smith, a burly man with a dry sense of humor and a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard, does support the reversal saying it will eventually give industry a more reliable local timber supply.He says a lot of the nearby Willamette National Forest, roaded or not, is dangerously overgrown.
That built-up fuel makes these forests more prone to catastrophic wildfires."This is not a 'ge...