Pasayten's Methow Valley Bulletin Board

Your time has passed, shut up boomer! Your way didn’t work.

.
Details emerging, announced yesterday:

https://archive.ph/e5CKb. (Link to Seattle Times article around paywall)

“The memo has the effect of declaring nearly 60% of all national forestlands to be in a state of emergency, thereby lifting the usual requirements for public comment and environmental review for protection of endangered species and cultural resources before logging.
All regional foresters with the Forest Service were also ordered to develop five-year strategies to increase their timber volume to achieve an agencywide increase of 25%. The directive was issued by acting Associate Chief Christopher French in a memo to all regional foresters issued Thursday.
Timber organizations cheered the federal action Thursday.”
.

The wise reality of her statement is much needed and the environmental groups have had decades of successful battles under their belts to know how to fight. Trump's DoJ is now understaffed, they won't have the manpower or experience to take groups like EarthJustice on.

The EO's are indeed noise, designed to maintain the chaos, to distract and poise Trump as the strong man. If he were a strong leader he wouldn't be the leader of the Ready Fire Aim party that is moving so fast, he would have the strength to mobilize his supporters instead of fire them from their jobs and intimidate them.

.
Seattle Times article on Trump's timber order:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... northwest/

Quote:
“ “This is talk and bluster,” said Kristen Boyles, managing attorney of the Northwest Regional Office of Earthjustice in Seattle. “Executive orders direct other agencies to take action, and they certainly set policy and tone. But they cannot and do not replace requirements of congressionally enacted laws.”

The order seems to acknowledge that, with each clause buffered with “if appropriate and consistent with applicable law.” The order also includes a slew of deadlines for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to develop plans to increase logging. “

It will be in the proposed actions of those agencies that any changes could occur.

Any effort to cut protected areas — especially by working around the Endangered Species Act, as the order suggests — would be challenged in court, Boyles said. The nation’s forests are, under multiple federal laws, to be managed for multiple uses — species protection, recreation, clean water and air — not just timber production.

“This executive order cannot supplant any of that,” Boyles said.
.

To the mattresses. And Pitchforks.

The EO is, of course, reflective of the READY, FIRE, AIM, gang's goals which are to negate everything except that which serves the greater good of big corporations. Look at the bio of the guy Trump has put in charge of this and the money his family business will make off of the timber sales.

Yes, it's one thing to make a bizarre EO that assumes it is a magic wand that can make this happen overnight. The DoJ has already admitted in court they don't have enough lawyers left to defend Trump's other EO's and Musk's actions. States will generate all kinds of objections and rightly so. Private citizens and time-honored non profits that have been in this fight for decades will put up a huge fight, and they'll have the support of the American people.

But the distraction by chaos this churns is also a part of Musk & Trump's plan. The whole 'move fast & break things' mantra has never been more truthful.

.
Interesting…..

Even casting aside the NEPA and ESA processes - which is a BIG ‘IF’, since Court cases are certain- it takes a TON of folks to put up large numbers of timber sales simultaneously…..Foresters, appraisers, engineers, contract preparers, and a whole army of field people to do layout and marking of timber. And scalers and accountants on the back end. Even if the FS had the $$ available, I dont see how they can rapidly scale up to the kind of levels this order anticipates. Typically, from start to finish it might take 12-18 months to get a sale out the door, even if NEPA is complete.

And - as MC points out….there is not probably enough processing capacity - even in WA - anymore to handle much more volume than what’s is being sold right now. The places where there used to be big mills (Omak, Yakima, Plain) are long closed and the machinery sold on or scrapped, by now. Ditto the harvesting capabilities…..that just doesn't exist, anymore, those folks moved onto other jobs. Lloyd Logging, for instance, isnt going to rush out and buy 20 or 40 Million $$ worth of harvesting and trucking equipment for something that is going to last - for what - a few years? Who would operate that equipment?
.

That of course presupposes that there are sufficient sawmills and pulp mills and wood processing plants in this country to turn all of those trees into lumber, paper products, and things like plywood. That also presupposes there is sufficient demand for more wood products in the market, which I question given that we are likely rapidly heading into a recession. A Trump recession.

We all learned how well command economies work. It isn't like that isn't true anymore. The government can't just order the economy to grow.

Katie bar the door, it's open season
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential ... roduction/