It’s not clear how the Trump administration may affect the management guide for federal forests across the PNW

By Michael Dotson

The U.S. Forest Service is at a crossroads in 2025. As the Trump administration takes hold and federal employees are dealing with threats of termination from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the agency is set to wrap up a 120-day comment period on March 17 to amend the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.

Meant to guide forest stewardship across more than 20 million acres in the Pacific Northwest, the original Northwest Forest Plan left tribes and Indigenous communities out of the negotiating room.

Climate change was barely mentioned in 1994, and here we are 30 years later addressing issues that are important to many communities across Northern California, western Oregon, and western Washington.

While KS Wild has been encouraged by language in the agency’s draft environmental impact statement to protect older trees in areas meant for timber production, to incorporate and include tribes in co-stewardship and co-management of these forests, and to encourage more use of cultural and prescribed fire. But we are also concerned about the potential for more logging of older trees in old-growth forests, called late successional reserves.

Species protection

Along with providing a sustainable supply of timber to rural communities in the Northwest, one of the main premises of the Northwest Forest Plan was to also protect species dependent on old-growth ecosystems, mainly the northern spotted owl, the red tree vole, and the marbled murrelet.

The latest amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan takes into account the exclusion of Indigenous tribes in the original agreement and tries to improve upon tribal inclusion.

It also tries to address the different types of forest ecosystems across the Pacific Northwest by way of precipitation levels and frequency of fire. For the Klamath-Siskiyou region, where precipitation and fire regimes are mixed, it’s hard to apply the general term of “dry” to these forests, but that’s what the latest plan amendment seems to be doing.

Potential Trump administration impact

It remains to be seen what the Trump administration will do with the Northwest Forest Plan amendment effort, and there is potential that it could go the way of the National Old Growth Amendment and be abandoned.

Regardless of the outcome, KS Wild and conservation partners will keep advocating for public forests, old-growth reserves, and the wildlife that depend on them in whatever way we can.

For those of us in Jackson County and surrounding communities, this amendment has implications for nearby public forests like the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, which lies outside the back door of residents in Ashland and extends from the Southern Oregon coast all the way to the boundary with Crater Lake National Park.

Across the California state line, places like the Klamath and Six Rivers National Forests would be impacted by potential amendments to the Northwest Forest Plan.

The public is invited to comment on the Northwest Forest Plan amendment through March 17 by way of the U.S. Forest Service’s CARA comment portal.

KS Wild Side appears every month and features a staff member from KS Wild, a regional conservation organization based in Ashland. Michael Dotson works as the executive director for KS Wild. For more information go to kswild.org.