What’s happening in our National Forests:
The Forest Service had started implementing massive post-fire recovery, restoration, and wildfire fuels reduction projects that ignore essential protections for old growth forest ecosystems and wild rivers in California.
Under the guise of “emergency” declarations, these new logging projects undergo an accelerated environmental review process that limits public participation and opportunities for comment. Consequently, officials ignore or compromise critical measures to protect old growth forest ecosystems and wildlife, as well as eligible wild and scenic rivers and other land allocations.
Why it’s happening now:
Several factors have contributed to this accelerated environmental review and permitting process, including:
- Bipartisan approval by Congress of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 allows the Forest Service to declare emergencies to streamline permitting, accelerate environmental review, and limit public objections.
- President Trump’s 2025 Executive Order 14225 to increase logging on federal public lands, set timber harvest targets, streamline permitting, and encourage the use of categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Agricultural and Interior Secretaries have interpreted this order as increasing logging on federal public lands by 25%.
- A policy approved by President Trump’s Agricultural Secretary in 2025 intended to increase timber production through emergency declarations limits project alternatives considered under NEPA to two (action or no action) and eliminates the public’s ability to challenge environmentally destructive decisions.
- Massive wildfires on public and private timber lands fueled by the misguided century-long policy of eliminating natural fire and converting diverse old growth forest ecosystems into tree farms and clearcuts.
What’s being overlooked:
CalWild and its allies have reviewed and commented on several fast-tracked projects with serious environmental implications. Many of these projects call for weakening existing standards intended to protect old growth forests for old growth dependent wildlife such as the spotted owl.
Although these projects are generally avoiding logging in inventoried roadless areas (among the wildest national forest lands) and other areas with special protective designations, eligible Wild and Scenic rivers are often ignored or given short shrift in the accelerated environmental review.
Note: A Wild and Scenic River is a wild stream in our national forests that is recognized and protected for its many ecological and cultural values.
Some of the more egregious projects include:
Mokelumne-Amador-Calaveras (MAC) Forest Health Project: Threatens Multiple Important Waterways
This massive project covers 246,751 acres on the southern Eldorado and northern Stanislaus Forests.
Proposed forest thinning and fuel breaks threaten the scenic values of the North Fork Mokelumne (state) Wild and Scenic River, as well as stream segments found eligible and recommended by the Forest Service for federal protection, including:
- North Fork Stanislaus
- North Fork Mokelumne
- North and Middle Forks Cosumnes River
- Caples Creek
- Silver Fork American River
The Forest Service is also ignoring the concerns about the proposed project from two collaborative entities that include state and local agencies and local residents (Upper Mokelumne Mokelumne River Watershed Authority and the Amador Calaveras Consensus Group), which will have a significant say in possible state funding of the project. The project’s draft Environmental Impact Statement was recently released for public review with an extremely limited two-week comment period. Click here to learn more and take action.
West Lassen Headwaters Project: Threatens Old Growth and Deer and Mill Creek
Proposed on the Lassen National Forest in response to the devasting 2021 Dixie Fire and 2024 Park Fire, this project will accelerate logging on more than 100,000 acres of public lands south of Lassen National Park.
It will:
- Log large old growth trees providing essential habitat for the California spotted owl, American goshawk, and Pacific fisher.
- Replant trees in densities that will increase the likelihood of future catastrophic wildfires and
- Require the application of toxic herbicides on thousands of acres
The public was provided only 15 days to comment on the project Environmental Analysis (EA). Alarmingly, the project EA fails to mention or analyze potential impacts on agency-recommended Mill and Deer Creek Wild and Scenic Rivers flowing through the project area.
According to the Forest Service, they simply “forgot” about them, perhaps due to the accelerated and abbreviated analysis.
In response to our comments, the Forest Service proposed inadequate protection measures for the recommended rivers in its final decision but still failed to provide any environmental analysis of potential project impacts on these sensitive waterways.
More about Mill and Deer Creeks:
- Mill and Deer Creeks were recommended for Wild and Scenic River protection by the Forest Service in 1992 because they are two of last remaining streams in the Sacramento River basin that support wild native stocks of threatened spring chinook salmon and steelhead.
- Devastated by the Park Fire, Mill Creek formerly flowed through one of the largest old growth forests in the northern Sierra Nevada. The Forest Service is proposing a restoration strategy that replaces this once ecologically rich and diverse forest with what amounts to a tree farm that will only fuel future fires.
Caldor Fire Restoration Project
The Forest Service is proposing extensive logging and restoration actions in response to the destructive Caldor Fire, which burned more than 220,000 acres of the Eldorado National Forest in 2021.
The public was granted a 30-day comment period on the project EA, but agency approval of Phase 1 of the project was greenlighted under an emergency declaration, which blocks the public’s right to object to the project.
Although CalWild generally supports the agency’s restoration efforts, the Phase 1 approval of the project completely ignores two streams determined eligible for Wild and Scenic protection by the agency in 1989.
The North and Middle Forks of the Cosumnes River are eligible due to their free-flowing character and outstanding recreation and hydrological values. The Cosumnes River, along with its North and Middle Forks, is one of the few undammed rivers in the Sierra Nevada. This oversight is particularly troubling since future project phases covering the eastern portion of the Forest include eligible segments of the:
- South Fork American River
- Caples Creek
- Silver Fork American River
- Two inventoried roadless areas, including the Forest Service-recommended Caples Creek Wilderness.
North Trinity Community Risk Reduction Project
Even before an environmental analysis had been completed, the Forest Service approved in December 2025 logging on 1,200 acres of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest between Trinity Reservoir and the Trinity Alps Wilderness as an emergency measure.
The agency claims that the project is being developed collaboratively with the Trinity County Collaboration Group, but the group has reached no consensus on the project. Safe Alternatives for our Forest Environment (SAFE) filed a lawsuit challenging the project.
Los Padres Wildfire Risk Reduction Project
This project was red-flagged by CalWild and allies because it will log trees up to 24 inches in diameter in 38,345 acres of inventoried roadless areas, including some areas proposed as additions to existing wilderness in the Rep. Salud Carbajal’s Central Coast Heritage Protection Act.
The project also includes vegetation clearing for fuel breaks and defense zones directly adjacent to segments of the Arroyo Seco River and upper Piru Creek recommended by the Forest Service in 2005 as Wild and Scenic Rivers. Although we support a reasonable level of non-invasive fuel treatments in Wild and Scenic corridors, the project EA fails to assess potential impacts on the streams’:
- outstanding scenery
- recreation
- fish
- wildlife
- geology
- historical/cultural values
The shortened comment periods on environmental documents coupled with extensive use of boiler plate language makes it difficult for the public to provide thoughtful comments in response to these projects.
Many of the environmental documents claim that important decisions will be made on the ground during project implementation by forest hydrologists, biologists, and other specialists. These include things like the number of trees to be logged in streamside riparian areas and how many large trees will be removed from spotted owl territories.
The Forest Service was already short-staffed before President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency cut agency staffing to the bone. Now many specialists in the Forest Service are responsible for reviewing projects on multiple National Forests totaling millions of acres.
Most troubling is the Forest Service’s focus on maximizing reforestation by proposing to replant trees in high densities – up to 300 trees per acre with some projects. This highly dense reforestation strategy:
- Results in tree farms with similar age/size trees that create future wildfire problems.
- Largely ignores the latest science which suggests replanting in dispersed patches rather than “pines in lines” with trees little more than 12 feet apart.
- Many reforestation projects also require extensive use of toxic herbicides, which can pollute water supplies and are harmful to fish and amphibians.
