By Abigail Hakas | Next Generation Newsroom
The Allegheny National Forest is set to ramp up logging by more than 10% this year as part of a push from President Donald Trump to boost domestic lumber supplies.
The move has sparked fierce debate between environmentalists and pro-logging groups who disagree on cutting trees to reduce wildfire risks or improve forest health — two reasons cited in new federal guidance.
In the coming fiscal year, the state’s only national forest is set to sell 45 million board feet, an over 12% increase from this fiscal year, said Alisen Downs, public affairs specialist for the Allegheny National Forest. The federal government’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
It’s the first step in reaching the national 25% increase called for in a memo sent to regional foresters and deputy chiefs, which required the creation of five-year regional strategies.
Allegheny National Forest has proposed a five-year plan starting next fiscal year, Downs said.
“I think a slow and steady progress toward that increase is probably the best approach,” said Julia McCray, executive director of the Allegheny Forest Alliance, which includes local officials and people from the timber industry.
“Making sure that everything is well planned out and that it is accomplished efficiently [and] successfully is going to take a more planned approach,” she added.
While next year’s logging will be an increase from the over 39 million board feet sold for harvest in 2023-24 and the 40 million planned for this year, it’s not an historic high. In 2020-21, almost 50 million board feet were harvested.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a spending bill that would require the Forest Service to increase the average amount harvested between fiscal years 2020 and 2024 by 25%, so long as it’s in line with forest plans, which are blueprints created by the Forest Service guiding how the lands are managed.
For Allegheny National Forest, that’s capped at an annual harvest of 54.1 million board feet, as defined by its ongoing 2007 forest management plan.
‘National treasures’
“These are our national treasures. These are common, shared public goods,” said Will Harlan, southeast director for the Center for Biological Diversity and former editor for Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine, which covers the Allegheny National Forest.
Some logging, he said, can have a place in the national forest, but national forests provide a space for an older and more diverse ecosystem of trees that private land does not.
“Most of that logging should occur on private land because that benefits the taxpayers and the local landowners most directly,” he said. “But not on our publicly owned, shared national forests because that’s the only places where we’re going to find biodiversity, old growth and headwater streams that provide our drinking water.”
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But actually increasing logging on public land is far from a simple task.
The Forest Service struggles to maintain adequate staff to conduct robust logging, according to multiple sources in the timber industry and local officials familiar with Allegheny National Forest operations.
Setting up for a sale requires Forest Service employees to mark the trees and analyze the impacts that cuts would have on the ecosystem.
And the regulatory steps are many and arduous, said Amy Shields, executive director of Allegheny Hardwood Utilization Group, a nonprofit forest industry association partially funded by the state Department of Agriculture.
“There are just a lot more hoops that have to be jumped through for every layer of a project in order for them to be able to get to the point of actually putting out a timber sale,” she said.
But under a recent emergency designation affecting almost 60% of national forest land, some federally mandated regulations and processes aren’t required, including some put in place to protect endangered species or allow challenges to logging proposals.
The Forest Service did not respond to an inquiry about how much of the Allegheny National Forest is included under the emergency designation, although it appears to be a majority of the forest based on a map detailing the affected forests.
A 1960 federal act mandates that national forests be managed for multiple purposes, including outdoor recreation, water, wildlife, and timber. Some groups worry that the approach prioritizes logging above other uses for the forest.
“I don’t think that logging should be the number one priority for our public lands,” Harlan said.
He added that national forests should instead prioritize recreation, wildlife, and water quality.
After trees are set for logging, they go out to bid, typically purchased by local sawmills or brokers.
Bids can rake in hundreds of thousands each for the Forest Service, with a portion going to local municipalities to make up for property tax lost from the federal land in the four counties that contain it: Elk, Warren, McKean, and Forest.
Local officials from those counties are counting on an increase in sales to bring in more money.
Warren County gets an annual average of $300,000 to $350,000 from timber sales, said county Commissioner Ken Klakamp.
Roughly a third of the county is public lands, including the national forest, as well as state game lands and forests, he said. The timber sale profit is one way to recoup the lost taxes because public lands are tax-exempt.
But some argue that logging should be happening on private land that doesn’t have the biological diversity, including multiple endangered species, that the national forest has.
“It’s exactly the opposite of the direction we need to go,” said Matt Peters, administrative coordinator of Heartwood, a cooperative of grassroots organizations that advocate for an end to logging on public land. “Those long-term economic jobs depend on a forest that is standing, healthy, and intact.”
Abigail Hakas is a reporter for Next Generation Newsroom, part of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University. Reach her at ab***********@*******rk.edu.
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