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wildfires
The Fix Our Forests Act and the Politics of Wildfire
Logging interests and the U.S. Forest Service have a history of using the wildfire threat to create “emergency” authority to bypass environmental reviews and curtail judicial oversight.
Mar 18, 2025
When on January 23 of this year, California Senator Jarred Huffman stood on the House floor to voice his opposition to the Fix Our Forests Act, or FOFA,, he bitterly noted how the bill had been rushed to a vote without normal consultation.
The reason for the rush was obvious. Fires were raging in the suburbs of Los Angeles and FOFA’s proponents wanted to capitalize on the tragedy to pitch their bill, which in the name of wildfire prevention exempts vast acreage of backcountry logging from ordinary scientific and judicial oversight. The irony is that the LA fires had no connection with forests whatsoever. They began as grass and brush fires near populated areas, which, fanned by ferocious Santa Ana winds, quickly spread building to building, with disastrous results.
The irony widens when you consider that in 2024, Huffman, along with California Republican Jay Obernolte, introduced a bill that actually would help communities deal with fire. Called the Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act, it proposed $1 billion per year to help communities harden homes and critical infrastructure while also creating defensive space around their perimeters. The bill was introduced this year yet again, six days after FOFA was rushed to a vote, but it hasn’t even been given a hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee. That committee is chaired by Oklahoma Republican Bruce Westerman, who, it turns out, is the chief sponsor of the Fix Our Forests Act.
Once again, it’s the same old formula: slash citizen oversight in the name of wildfire reduction.
Do you see the political convolutions at work here? A very real fire danger facing communities is used to promote a bill focused primarily on back country “fuels reduction,” far from such communities, while the Huffman-Obernolte bill, that focuses on the communities themselves, gets nowhere. The process not only puts millions of acres of mature and old-growth forests at risk of massive “mechanical treatments,” it leaves the immediate fire dangers faced by communities largely unaddressed.
This political formula is nothing new. Twenty two years ago, then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, which also sought environmental restrictions for expanded logging under the pretext of preventing wildfires like those in California. The concern for conservationists was the same then as it is now—logging interests and the U.S. Forest Service using the wildfire threat to create “emergency” authority to bypass environmental reviews and curtail judicial oversight, providing easier access to mature and old-growth forests, while doing little in the way of home hardening and community protection.
Proponents of the Fix our Forests Act would counter that there are provisions within the bill that help coordinate grant applications for communities. That’s well and good, but falls far short of what the Huffman-Obernolte bill provides, which not only includes major funding to harden homes and critical infrastructure, but helps with early detection and evacuation planning and initiates Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience plans for insurance certification.
Further, there is a plethora of research that contradicts the notion that fuels reduction and forest thinning protects communities from wildfire. In fact, intensive forest management is shown to often increase fire severity. Meanwhile, the industry position that forest protection increases fire risk doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, years of mechanical treatments have done little to solve the problem, while doing tremendous ecological damage.
Now we have President Donald Trump’s all-caps Executive Order: “IMMEDIATE EXPANSION OF AMERICAN TIMBER PRODUCTION.” Once again, it’s the same old formula: slash citizen oversight in the name of wildfire reduction. The order calls for action to “reduce unnecessarily lengthy processes and associated costs related to administrative approvals for timber production, forest management, and wildfire risk reduction treatments,” while putting community safety up as the justification. From the first paragraph: “Furthermore, as recent disasters demonstrate, forest management and wildfire risk reduction projects can save American lives and communities.” Only they don’t. The only things shown to save lives and communities are the types of actions put forth by the Community Protections and Wildfire Resilience act.
The Democratic Party has a history of protecting public lands and a constituency that expects such protection. A similar thing can be said of certain moderate Republicans, where a courageous spirit prevails when it comes to environmental protection. If there ever was a time to remember that tradition and that spirit, it would be now.
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Despite Catastrophic Fires, Federal Court in California Dismisses Youth Climate Case
"Wildfires are ravaging these children's communities in California, but the court claims that their suffering is too 'indirect' to matter," said the plaintiffs' lawyer. "This ruling is nothing short of judicial dereliction."
Feb 11, 2025
With Californians still reeling from what is expected to be "the costliest wildfire disaster in American history," a federal judge in the state on Tuesday dismissed a constitutional climate case that young people brought against the U.S. government.
The firm Our Children's Trust filed the equal protection lawsuit on behalf of 18 children in the Central District of California on December 10, 2023. Genesis B. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency initially just targeted the EPA and its administrator, but the plaintiffs later added the Office of Management and Budget and its director as defendants.
Since the beginning of the case, the Biden administration fought for its dismissal. U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, previously dismissed the case last May but also allowed the youth plaintiffs' lawyers to amend their complaint. The judge dismissed the case again on Tuesday, the first major development since Republican President Donald Trump—a noted enemy of climate action—returned to the White House last month.
"We are fighting not just for ourselves, but for every young person who deserves a world where their lives, their health, and their future matter."
Responding in a Tuesday statement, Our Children's Trust slammed the "extraordinary decision to dismiss the case by disregarding key evidence showing the harmful effects of the EPA's policies and the unique vulnerability of children's bodies to climate pollution," highlighting expert testimony from economist Joseph Stiglitz and Dr. Elizabeth Pinsky, a psychiatrist and pediatrician.
"By dismissing this case, the court is turning a blind eye to the real-world harms youth are enduring right now. Wildfires are ravaging these children's communities in California, but the court claims that their suffering is too 'indirect' to matter," said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel for the plaintiffs.
"This ruling is nothing short of judicial dereliction in the face of a climate emergency," she asserted. "The court refused to consider that the government's devaluation of children isn't just bad policy—it's a violation of fundamental equal rights."
The young plaintiffs also expressed disappointment with Fitzgerald's decision in the wake of January blazes that experts tied to the climate emergency—specifically, the World Weather Attribution found that fossil fuel-driven global warming made the weather conditions that caused the Los Angeles County fires 35% more probable.
"The court's decision to dismiss this case before we could even present our evidence is a gut punch," lead plaintiff Genesis B said Tuesday. "We are living with the consequences of these policies every single day—wildfires, choking smoke, evacuation orders. And now, with the strongest storm of the year set to hit Southern California this week, our case is more urgent than ever."
"Forecasters are warning of widespread flooding, landslides, and dangerous debris flows, especially in areas devastated by wildfires," Genesis B. explained. "We wanted the chance to show the court the science, the economics, and the lived experiences that prove the government's actions are harming us. Instead, we were denied that opportunity. He just shut the door on us, made up his own facts, and never listened to the real experts. He never gave us the opportunity to testify."
The 18 young plaintiffs are not backing down! They remain committed to fighting for their constitutional rights and will continue to pursue all available legal avenues to hold the U.S. government accountable for its actions. Read the PR: bit.ly/GenesisPR0225 #YouthvGov #GenesisvEPA
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— Our Children’s Trust (@youthvgov.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Despite the setback in court on Tuesday, the young plaintiffs in this case are determined to keep fighting and are now considering potential next steps with their lawyers.
"We are not backing down. This fight is about refusing to let our lives be discounted, and we won't stand by as our future is treated as expendable," declared plaintiff Maya W. "We are fighting not just for ourselves, but for every young person who deserves a world where their lives, their health, and their future matter."
This case is just one of many that young people have pursued in recent years, some of which are ongoing and many that involve Our Children's Trust. The group said that earlier Tuesday, attorneys representing a dozen youth plaintiffs in the constitutional climate case Layla H. v. Virginia presented their case virtually before the state Supreme Court.
In another Our Children's Trust case, Juliana v. United States, 43 members of Congress last month submitted a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the 21 plaintiffs. That filing came less than a month after the Montana Supreme Court upheld a 2023 decision that the state government's promotion of fossil fuels violates young residents' state constitutional rights. Earlier last year, Hawaii's governor and Department of Transportation announced an "unprecedented" settlement in another youth climate case.
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The Fix Our Forests Act Is a Logging Bill Disguised as a Firefighting Bill
If passed, it would open millions of acres of forests to logging without scientific review or citizen input. A better name for this legislations would be the Fix It So We Can Log Without Citizen Oversight Act.
Feb 10, 2025
It comes in a box with a picture of a fire extinguisher on the front. Below it the words: Guaranteed to stop wildfires. But when you open it up there’s a chainsaw inside. Tucked beside it is a piece a piece of paper saying, “Now without citizen overview!”
That’s the Fix Our Forests Act, a logging bill disguised as a firefighting bill. The tell is in the numerous and creative ways it would obstruct citizen input, from delaying citizen review until after the trees are cut to reducing the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits from six months to 120 days, seriously straining the ability of small citizen groups to apply legal restraint. It waives National Environmental Policy Act protections on fire-sheds as large as 250,000 square acres and allows loggings to proceed even if courts find the logging plan violates the law. There are no limits on the size and age of trees that can be cut, and the language is so vague that even clear cuts could qualify as “fuels treatment.” If passed, it would open millions of acres of forests to logging without scientific review or citizen input. A better name for this legislations would be the Fix It So We Can Log Without Citizen Oversight Act.
Introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), and having passed in the House, it’s now being rushed through the Senate in an attempt to capitalize on the heightened fire concern surrounding the tragic LA fires. A vote is expected any day now.
If our forests are broken, might it be the successive rounds of logging trucks and roads, chainsaws and feller bunchers, herbicidal treatments and industrial replanting of greenhouse-grown monocrops that did the breaking?
The bill claims to “protect communities by expediting environmental analyses, reducing frivolous lawsuits, and increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration projects.” But if protecting communities were really the goal, this bill would pour resources into the only methods proven to do that: hardening homes and defending immediate space.
Most homes don’t catch fire directly from flames themselves, but from embers blown ahead of a fire. Simple measures like screening vents, covering gutters, and pruning vegetation directly around buildings dramatically improve their fire resilience. Thinning vegetation in the immediate surroundings, within 100 feet or so of the dwelling, can also help. These were among the recommendations of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. But rather than heed those recommendations by investing in boots on the ground to harden homes and educate communities, the bill diverts resources to backcountry logging.
The U.S. Forest Service has spent years making the argument that “mechanical treatment” of forests reduces wildfire. Independent research, however, comes to different conclusions, that thinning harms the forest and actually increases the very conditions that favor fire—heat, dryness, and wind. The reasons are fairly obvious. For instance, removing trees makes it harder for forests to slow wind, increasing the wind speeds of potential fires and thus the speed of spread. It also allows more sunlight to reach the forest floor, heating up the ground. Even more importantly, trees don’t just stand around soaking up sunlight, they also cool and hydrate their surroundings. It’s called transpiration, and can be understood as a kind of sweating, just like we do to keep cool in the sun. A single tree can have the cooling power of up to 10 air conditioners.
But that really is just the beginning. Those trees also help make rain. By sweating water vapor they not only cool the air, they deliver water vapor to the sky, feeding the formation of clouds. Even more remarkable, they seed that vapor with biochemicals such as terpenes (the forest scent) and other bits of biota that provide the grains for eventual rain drops to condense around. Forests make clouds. Those clouds then rain down, watering other forests, hydrating soil and vegetation, and increasing resilience to wildfire.
In other words, what the Fix our Forests Act calls dangerous fuels are also air conditioners and humidifiers, rain makers and rain catchers, as their needles gather and slow the falling of rain, allowing it to seep into the ground and make its way to aquifers, which will prove critical during the dry season. Of course, older, deeply rooted trees are best able to tap this water, but there are no protections for them in the Fix Our Forests Act.
Given that the concern is fire, it’s remarkable how little this legislation ever mentions water, its antidote. Though I did find, in section 119, under “Watershed Condition Framework Technical Corrections,” calls to strike the word “protection” from watershed provisions in a previous, similar bill, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, under George W. Bush. (To see a short, simple demonstration of how plant moisture effects flammability, watch this.)
Perhaps the problems with this bill are explained by the first word of the bill’s title: “Fix.” You can fix a car. You can fix a broken plate. But can you “fix” a forest? Can you “fix” a living ecosystem of infinite complexity? Such language represents an outdated way of thinking about the living world around us, and marks the very kind of thinking that’s gotten into this mess in the first place. And one needs to ask: If our forests are broken, might it be the successive rounds of logging trucks and roads, chainsaws and feller bunchers, herbicidal treatments and industrial replanting of greenhouse-grown monocrops that did the breaking?
Yes, there are instances where careful thinning of small trees and undergrowth is indicated, such as right around built communities or in industrial plantations planted too densely. But such measured action doesn’t need this bill, and this bill isn’t about such measured action. Rather, as put by Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations with Defenders of Wildlife, the bill “will do little of anything to combat fires and instead plays favorites with the timber industry which is hungry to consume more of our forests—removing large fire-resilient trees and devastating the lands and species which call them home.”
As mentioned, the bill is moving quickly. Last minute citizen outcry is the only thing standing in its way.
The following Senators have been identified as key votes: John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Angus King ((-Maine), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and John Fetterman (D-Pa.)
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