"The recently passed spending bill sets logging targets that federal officials don’t have the capacity to meet"
"The recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act is likely to create a huge, ugly mess for our public lands. It mandates oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, requires routine oil and gas sales in eight western states and Alaska, and offers up millions more acres in the Gulf of Mexico to extractive industries.
But one of the most devastating impacts of the law will likely be on America’s forests. The new law sets aggressive timber harvesting goals and slashes spending for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Environmental advocates and industry insiders say those goals are contradictory and unworkable.
“You can’t say we’re going to increase the timber harvest then fire half the people who go out and do all the work,” said Dale Bosworth, who served as chief of the Forest Service under President George W. Bush. “The capacity for the Forest Service to do some of that work was down anyway. And when you come in and do the RIFs [reductions in force], it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Bosworth was one of six former chiefs who recently authored a statement decrying the staff cuts and the Trump administration’s push to sell off public lands."
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