News of the Day March 21, 2025
Wisconsin May See More Logging Under New Presidential Order

President Donald Trump wants to ramp up timber production by fast-tracking projects under laws that protect endangered species and other environmental regulations, which could expand logging of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

Earlier this month, President  Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to issue guidance on increasing timber production and sound forest management. The order is intended to make the nation “more self-reliant” as Trump has imposed, and then paused, tariffs on Canada, the nation’s largest supplier of lumber.

Trump has called on leaders of multiple federal agencies to issue updated guidance by April on tools to ramp up timber production. Those tools may include the use of stewardship contracts and Good Neighbor Authority, or GNA, agreements.

Wisconsin signed a GNA agreement with the U.S. Forest Service in 2015 that authorized the state to assist with national forest management, including timber sales. Since 2015, the Department of Natural Resources said it’s conducted just shy of 200 timber sales spanning 32,000 acres under the agreement.

“Expanded timber production on the CNNF could lead to an increase in the amount of national forest timber sales available for the state to administer through our GNA agreement; however, it is uncertain how much additional volume beyond the current average of 25 million board feet annually the state would be capable of managing,” a DNR spokesperson said in an email.

The national forest and other federal forest land make up 9.4 percent of the state’s nearly 17 million acres of forest land. The forestry and logging sector directly employs around 4,400 of the 57,000 workers in Wisconsin’s nearly $27 billion forest products industry.

Logging advocates like Henry Schienebeck with the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association said stakeholders may have to take a closer look at demand and the capacity of mills to handle more lumber. Even so, he said the order represents a golden opportunity for the public to have healthy, well-managed forests.

“I think they’re doing a great job between the state and the Forest Service working together to get the forest managed because we were behind, way behind, and we’re still behind a little bit,” Schienebeck, the group’s executive director, said.