Trump Wants to Cut Down Forests & Redistricting Battles

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1:26efforts. Elevate your wins with Adio. Start your free trial at adio.com slash iHeart. This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio.

1:42The Trump administration wants to get rid of a rule that protects tens of millions of acres of national forest from road building and large-scale logging. Forests that protect endangered species, biodiversity, and watersheds used for drinking water from Alaska to Puerto Rico. But scrapping the so-called roadless rule will face a reality check from litigation, government downsizing, and even a soft timber market. Joining me is an expert in environmental law, Pat Parenteau, a professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. Pat, just what is the roadless rule. So this was a rule adopted during President Clinton's last year in office, literally.

2:31And it relates to areas on the national forest, which are 193 million acres. And it comprises about 58 ,000 acres. So it's about 30 percent of all the lands in the national forest. And these are areas that, as the name implies, don't have roads. And the reason, by the way, they don't have roads and haven't for over 100 years of forest service management, which has always emphasized logging, that's been the raison d 'etre of the national forest for almost its entire existence, right? The reason they're roadless is they're too expensive to build and maintain roads in these remote areas, high elevation areas, very difficult to access areas.

3:22If they were accessible, they would have been logged long ago because the Forest Service has been converting native forests, wild forests, to plantations, tree plantations, emphasizing commercially valuable species, eliminating everything else. So that's why they're roadless, and that's why they become such valuable for many reasons, wildlife and fisheries conservation, endangered species, but also water supply. These are intact watersheds, I mean, relatively intact, right, that haven't been disturbed, haven't been roaded. And therefore, the water coming off of that landscape has been filtered by all of the trees and vegetation.

4:06A healthy forest, in other words, produces clean water. This is water you can drink. I mean, it's not recommended, you know, because of, you know, bacteria. But in terms of pollution, this is water that you don't have to filter and treat extensively. So these areas are valuable for all kinds of reasons. You know, outdoor recreation, sure, fishing and hunting and all that, but also water supply. So that's what's at stake here. Before I did research for this story, I thought that the Forest Service was meant to preserve our forests, not to produce timber. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're managed under what's called multiple use.

4:47Some people would, you know, say multiple abuse. But still, the law says there are five different values of the forest, including, as I mentioned, fish and wildlife, recreation, water supply and lumber. Of course, timber is one of the primary reasons for managing national forests. And, you know, we've had laws that required the Forest Service to come up with an annual quota of cuts. Whether or not the market needed the amount of timber, the Forest Service was obligated to put it on the market, sell it for below market value in many cases. And a lot of the timber that came off national forests, particularly in the West, particularly the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, they were cut for export.

5:32They weren't processed in the United States. We were operating like a third world country in terms of our national forest, exporting really high value trees, large diameter old growth trees to send them to Japan, send them to Korea and have Japan and Korea process these into furniture, into musical instruments, pianos, even chopsticks, right? and then sell them back to us. It was crazy that we were letting other countries benefit from our forest resources. So that all came to an end. And Clinton was certainly instrumental during the whole Spotted Owl God Squad proceedings and all of that background.

6:14Clinton was the one who said, you know, we've got to retain the remainder of our intact forest resources for all these reasons. And so, you know, we've turned the corner on how the national forests are being managed for multiple uses, not just timber production. But now, of course, Trump wants to prioritize what he's calling, you know, a lumber emergency. Of course, I don't know how many have lost track of the number of emergencies he's declared, but we've apparently got a timber emergency as well. So the Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, who slammed the roadless rule as absurd, said there's a timber emergency and they have to get more logs on trucks to comply with Trump's March order calling for expanded forest cutting to avoid importing wood products and reduce wildfire threats.

7:07Is there a timber emergency? No, there is certainly a demand for more timber from the forest products industry, from the lumber companies, because they don't want to have to import lumber from Canada. We do import a lot from Canada. I mean, Canada has more forest than we do. And of course, now with tariffs imposed by Trump on Canadian imports, the cost of lumber from Canada is going to be coming more expensive, as is everything else, from coffee to eggs, right? So that is true. But the reason that there is a shortage of timber production in the United States is for three reasons. Number one, it's a labor shortage.

7:50Number two, it's the mills that used to process timber have closed. And number three is the supply chain for lumber products has become more complicated. You know, the transportation of logs and trees, you know, between the United States and Canada has become more complicated. So the reasons why the domestic production of lumber has declined has nothing to do with an emergency. We have plenty of timber and lumber. The question is, at what cost? And if you want to increase U.S. production of timber, the way to do that is to create a market for it and then create the labor force and also, by the way, have an agency, namely the Forest Service, with skilled silviculturists, the people that manage the forest.

8:41And of course, Trump is cutting those positions. They've cut over 2 ,000 Forest Service positions. When you do that, you can't do the planning, the management, the timber sales. So those are some of the reasons why if there's a shortage of domestic lumber on the market. The reasons are not because we're not logging old growth and roadless areas. The reasons lie elsewhere. And what would be the impact of rescinding this roadless rule? By the way, we should say something about what the roadless rule is and what it allows, because it addresses specifically this business about we need to cut these trees to manage wildfire, right?

9:24So what the roadless rule allows is thinning of forests, fuel reduction, which means, you know, the smaller trees in the forest, and prescribed burns. That's number one. Number two, roadless areas have been roadless for over 100 years, as I mentioned, and there hasn't been any intensive logging because they're so expensive to build and maintain. And the rule also reduces all of the litigation. I've been involved in defending the roadless rule, full disclosure, back in 2002 in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And since then, there have been over a dozen lawsuits. There's been all kinds of conflict and litigation over these areas.

10:09And so one of the reasons for the roadless rule is to say, well, let's put an end to these endless lawsuits and conflict over these areas. They're very popular with the public. That's why there's so much controversy in litigation. And this roadless rule was designed to put an end to that and get the Forest Service to focus on those areas of the national forest where there is a history of commercial logging. And, you know, focus your efforts on increasing production, if that's what we nationally think we need to do, in those areas that are already roaded. And by the way, there are 265 ,000 miles of forest roads in the National Forest.

10:54Think about that. The entire interstate highway system is 47 ,000 miles. So you can do the math. You're talking about, you know, a huge multiple of roads already in the National Forest. And guess what? the backlog of costs to either decommission, as they say, these roads, in other words, restore them to a natural environment, or just simply maintain them, the price tag for that is over$8 billion in FY 2023. So, you know, the Forest Service doesn't even begin to have enough money to manage the roads they already have, to either maintain them or decommission them, right? So now you're talking about opening up all these new areas to road building with all the expense of that and the maintenance of that, of those roads once they're built.

11:50And then you're going to access these areas that haven't been logged, haven't been commercially valuable enough to invest the money to log them. That's what this order is talking about. And the Forest Service is dealing with budget cuts and staffing shortages. So it may have problems just keeping up with the things it already has to do. Right. They don't have a budget. The budget they have for managing wildfires is the largest segment of their budget. It's over a billion dollars. Wildfires is definitely a problem. There's lots of reasons for that. We could have a whole program on why there are so many wildfires, including, of course, climate change and global warming driven wildfires.

12:32but lots of reasons why building in the areas close to the forest interface is a reason for the wildfires. But here's the thing about roads. When you build more roads, you're going to get more wildfires. The data is crystal clear on that. Why? Guess why? Because people are driving into these areas, these remote areas, and what are they doing? They're building campfires, aren't they? And what do they do with campfires? Do they always, always put them out? No. 90 % of wildfire ignition is human caused, 90 percent. That's the data. So you put roads into these areas, you're going to get more wildfires.

13:11That's clear from our history of dealing with wildfires. And the Forest Service would tell you that. Yeah, Forest Service research published during the first Trump administration showed that more wildfires ignite near roads. Wildfire mitigation efforts have been more common in roadless areas than in the rest of the national forest system and roadless areas have no effect on wildfire burn rates. Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue this conversation with Professor Pat Parenteau of the Vermont Law and Graduate School. We'll talk about some of the litigation that can be expected if the roadless rule is rescinded.

13:50I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. Everyone's talking about how AI is transforming work, especially in sales. While the landscape One thing remains the same, the thrill of closing a deal. Whether it's a gong or a confetti machine, every team has its celebration rituals. Adio is designed for that moment. It's the agentic CRM that turns customer signals into actionable insights, helping you close deals faster with revenue agents and automations working around the clock. You'll have everything you need to scale your go-to market efforts. Elevate your wins with Adio. Start your free trial at adio.com slash iHeart.

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16:15The U.S. Forest Service, which manages roadless areas, is grappling with budget cuts and staffing shortages. At the same time, environmental groups are gearing up for legal battles, arguing the so-called roadless rule safeguards endangered species, clean water and biodiversity. President Bill Clinton implemented the rule in the final weeks of his term, envisioning it as a way to protect endangered species and 350 watersheds within national forests used for drinking water from Alaska to Puerto Rico. Among the places the rule has preserved are parts of the world's largest coastal temperate rainforest in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, vast mountain ranges in central Idaho, the peaks and plateaus above Utah's contested Barriers National Monument, and the Appalachian Forest in Virginia.

17:09But Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has slammed the roadless rule as absurd and declared a timber emergency to get more logs on trucks and comply with Trump's March order calling for expanded forest cutting to avoid importing wood products and reduce wildfire threats. I've been talking to Professor Pat Parenteau of the Vermont Law and Graduate School. If they do rescind the rule, I mean, do you think that nothing much would happen at the beginning because the Forest Service doesn't have the money or the staff to start building roads? Well, first of all, I mean, an attempt to repeal this roadless rule that, as I said, there's been over a dozen lawsuits.

17:54There'll be another one, several, in fact. So the first thing you're going to have is another round of litigation over repealing the rule. and that'll involve the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the whole panoply of federal law will come into play and it'll be litigated in many district courts around the country because everybody's got a favorite forest they're going to defend to the death, not to the death, but they're going to defend vigorously, right? So we're going to have a whole bunch of litigation over whether the repeal of the roadless rule is legitimate and I predict there are going to be injunctions levied against the Forest Service when they try to sell timber from these areas.

18:33And then, of course, the question of market. So, you know, if the companies have to build these roads, I don't think there's going to be very many of these areas that'll be long. One of the biggest ones that's been contentious is the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. And that's been back and forth between it's either exempt from the roadless rule or it's in the roadless rule. Currently, it is in the roadless rule. So there's certainly parts of the forest where the value of the timber in question, these old-growth large trees, it's sufficient enough that the timber industry is going to want to fight over that and try to get access to those areas.

19:08But in terms of the 58 ,000 acres around the country, including forests in the east, right here in our own Vermont, the Green Mountain National Forest, or across the river in North Hampshire, the White Mountain National Forest, you know, these are areas that have roadless areas. And the timber in those areas just isn't going to be economically feasible to log. But some of these big Western forests, yeah, there's probably going to be significant fights to get access to those areas. So you litigated this, as you mentioned, if they do rescind the roadless rule, what would some of the challenges be?

19:47Yeah, the main one, well, you know, the National Forest Management Act requires that every forest have a plan. And because the roadless rule has been in effect, you know, it's gone through, as I say, different iterations, shall we say, as different administrations come and go, you know, the Clinton administration, and then the Bush one administration, and then you had Bush two. And so, you know, it's gone back and forth in terms of the extent of the roadless rule and what forests were in and out. But right now, all of these areas are protected it as roadless. And so the National Forest Management Act will be one of the principal laws because you have to comply with forest plans.

20:30And if the forest plan says there's no logging in these roadless areas, then there can't be any logging until you change the forest plan. That would be step number one. Well, to do that, you have to go through NEPA. You have to do another environmental assessment, at least, if not an environmental impact statement. We've talked a lot about what's happening with NEPA. And even though, you know, the Trump administration is trying to limit the scope of NEPA and the Supreme Court as well, it still exists. It's still a law. It has to be complied with. And you can't just snap your fingers and say, we're going to change a forest plan and we're going to write a two-page environmental impact statement to do it.

21:09That's going to get challenged and overturned in court. Most of these areas contain really important critical habitat of a number of endangered species. Think Canada lynx, think wolverine, think grizzly bears, think marbled muralettes, think spotted owls. I could go on and on. These old growth forests are the last stronghold of many of our most high-profile endangered species, right? Not just insects and butterflies, but, you know, animals that people really care about and will fight for. So, you know, that's what you're looking at when you go after these areas. You're going to involve a whole slate of environmental laws, including, by the way, the Clean Water Act, because when you road these areas, road them, build roads in them, they erode, right?

22:01And sediment comes off and sediment carries all kinds of other pollutants. If you think about, you know, the way we fight fires, we flood the landscape with not only pesticides, but herbicides and other fire-retardant chemicals that are toxic. And there's all kinds of data about the fact that forests now have all kinds of these chemicals saturated into the sediment of these rivers coming out of the streams that are coming off these national forests, and again, down into the water supply systems for communities. So all kinds of laws come into play when you go after these roadless areas. The agricultural secretary made this announcement in June and nothing's been done yet.

22:47We're edging into late August. Is it something that might just be put aside? Although you also have the fact that the so-called Big Beautiful Bill mandates that the Forest Service increase U.S. timber sales by 250 million board feet each year through 2034. That's an 8 % annual increase over 2023 and a roughly 75 % cumulative spike in logging over the next nine years. Yeah, well, you know, you can put those kinds of goals out there. The same thing with how many people we're going to deport every year. And the truth is, the reality is you're not going to meet those quotas. Either the market isn't going to be there to meet those quotas, or the amount of litigation I'm describing is going to stretch out for years into whatever the next administration is going to be.

23:44And as I've said, you know, this roadless rule has been a bone of contention, a political football for over 20 years, well over, almost 25 years. And so it's not going to end. It's not going to stop with the Trump administration. They're not going to be able to road all these areas and get all the timber out of these areas. It's just not going to happen until there's another administration in power, maybe a different Congress in power. Who knows? But the point is, we don't know what the future of these areas are. Just because the Agriculture Secretary is making these sweeping pronouncements doesn't mean it's going to happen.

24:21Looking at this broader and as far as what steps the Trump administration has taken so far with regard to the environment, are they focusing on one area in particular or broader than that? We thought the focus was going to be climate and energy, and of course it certainly has been. But frankly, from what I see, it's across the board. There is no law that's safe from this administration, no environmental law, and you could broaden it beyond that to civil rights laws. But certainly from my expertise, I've never seen anything like this. I've been doing this for 55 years. I've seen conservative Republican administrations come and go, including the Reagan administration and James Watt.

25:02I've never seen anything like this. They're leaving no stone unturned to deregulate and cripple the ability of federal agencies across the board to manage either public lands, as we're talking about today, or public health with EPA or energy supply with the Department of Energy. Nothing that this administration is doing is designed to strengthen programs that we have had now for many decades to manage natural resources, to manage our energy supply and energy demand, to create affordable sources of either timber, as we're talking about today, or energy, if we wanted to talk about that. The market and the technology is pointing towards cleaner, greener systems of producing whatever goods and services we need.

25:55This administration is rolling the clock back across the board. That's what I see. And that usually means even more litigation. Thanks so much for joining me today, Pat. That's Professor Pat Parenteau of the Vermont Law and Graduate School. Everyone's talking about how AI is transforming work, especially in sales. While the landscape shifts, one thing remains the same, the thrill of closing a deal. Whether it's a gong or a confetti machine, every team has its celebration rituals. Adio is designed for that moment. It's the agentic CRM that turns customer signals into actionable insights, helping you close deals faster.

26:30With revenue agents and automations working around the clock, you'll have everything you need to scale your go-to market efforts. Elevate your wins with Adio. Start your free trial at adio.com slash iHeart.

26:46Every sale comes down to a single second. The one between buy now and maybe later. PayPal is built to help your business win that moment. With a checkout experience that feels certain, reliable, and familiar. With a global two-sided network and hundreds of millions of buyers who already know us. All to keep you in control however buying happens next. new markets new ai powered selling services a whole new agentic era where you decide how your business will show up and stand up paypal is built to help your business come out ahead we're built for payments built for growth built for agentic paypal open built for all business visit paypalopen.com to get started that's paypalopen.com Discover a spectacular island destination with crystal blue seas, endless sunshine, and the cool Bahamian breeze.

27:49Baja Mar, located in Nassau, Bahamas, offers your choice of three luxury hotels, over 45 fine dining and nightlife venues, Jean-Baptiste's all-new jazz club, the Caribbean's most luxurious casino, and one-of-a-kind experiences for the entire family, like our 15-acre tropical water park, wildlife sanctuary, world-class golf course, and so much more. Visit BajaMar.com today. This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! There were redistricting rallies in Chicago, Illinois and Austin, Texas over the weekend. Protests against Texas Republicans planned to redraw the state's congressional maps to create five new Republican seats.

28:32And in support of Texas Democrats who disrupted a special session in the legislature and fled to Chicago to oppose the unusual mid-decade redistricting called for by President Trump. It's important for us to show up because we kind of started this battle, I guess, trying to wake America up. Everybody needs to know what's happening. Everyone needs to see what we're fighting for. Texas Democrats ran out the clock in the special legislative session, but two hours later, Governor Greg Abbott called a second session to redraw the maps, which would target key districts represented by Latino Democrats.