A supporter says the timber industry feels encouraged by order; a critic says it’s just red meat for Trump’s base.

By Amanda Youngsman, for the Community News Service

When one of Vermont’s oldest lumber mills, run by the A. Johnson Company in Bristol, shut down its saws in 2023 after 117 years in business, it seemed like another sign of a waning timber industry. 

Now, a sweeping executive order from President Donald Trump has stirred fresh debate in the Green Mountain State over whether a surge in federal logging might revitalize local forest economies or imperil treasured woodlands. 

The March 1 directive mandates an aggressive push to harvest more timber from federal lands — a move with outsize implications for Vermont’s vast forests and small communities. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture followed by declaring an emergency across 112 million acres of national forests — roughly 59% of the system — fast-tracking logging projects that reduce wildfire risk or remove diseased trees. 

That includes Vermont’s Green National Forest, which spans more than 400,000 acres in the central and southern parts of the state. Though it only makes up about 6-7% of Vermont’s total land area, it’s the state’s largest federal land holding and a key source of wood for local sawmills. 

Part of the presidential order directs agencies to take “all necessary and appropriate steps consistent with applicable law” to scale back or scrap existing policies, regulations, guidelines and more “that impose an undue burden on timber production.” 

State officials are studying the implications of the order. 

It “will be up to the (federal) lawyers what aspects of these regulations impose undue burden, and it’s hard to say how things will play out over the next coming months, or even years,” said Oliver Pierson, director of forestry at the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. 

“We in Vermont, on state lands, engage in very thorough forest management,” Pierson said. “It’s important to us. It supports society’s needs and the forest economy but also forest health goals, which are similar to the U.S. Forest Service.” 

The White House order mentions national and economic security as reasons for ramping up domestic timber production, and in Vermont, Pierson sees where that argument can apply. 

“We need wood products. We have a housing crisis in Vermont, and right now, we’re relying on factories outside of the U.S., which creates a requirement to have an open border,” Pierson said. “This could be perceived by some people as a vulnerability, and there is some merit to say that locally processed (wood) is positive.” 

A 2021 U.S. Forest Service assessment noted that “local sawmills depend upon the supply of Green Mountain National Forest timber” and that timber sales contribute to the rural economy by providing raw materials and support for logging jobs. 

In 2017, Vermont’s forest sector supported over 13,000 jobs and generated more than $2 billion in economic output when accounting for recreation, logging and wood manufacturing, according to a study prepared for the state government and released in 2021. 

Yet the industry has shrunk significantly over the last several decades. From 1983 to 2022, the number of active sawmills dropped by 84%, from 250 to 39, according to the state. Most of the decrease has come in the last 20 or so years. 

Some in the forestry world see an opportunity for small logging contractors and towns to benefit from increased federal timber sales. The order also emphasizes “Good Neighbor Authority” partnerships, which would allow Vermont foresters to help plan and implement projects on federal lands.

“There are lots of reasons why the Forest Service hasn’t been doing more harvesting but amongst them are the weaponization of the Endangered Species Act,” said Jack Bell, one of the cofounders of Long View Forest, a logging company in Hartland. 

The Endangered Species Act has long been a flashpoint in logging disputes across the country, with conservation groups using it to challenge timber projects in areas where protected species may be impacted — a tactic that has delayed or halted harvests of federal lands. 

“It’s become so unbelievably easy for any group that doesn’t want trees to be cut to stop the Forest Service in its tracks,” Bell said. 

He criticized environmental activist groups such as Vermont-based Standing Trees for allegedly blocking timbering.

“Groups like Standing Trees, which want to further limit, or end outright, the harvesting of trees on public lands, move us in exactly the wrong direction. To me, it’s irresponsible not to harvest more of what we use here in Vermont and just shift that harvesting to other places that may not have the same high standards we have here in the United States,” Bell said. “‘Yes in my backyard’” is what we need here, and I think this executive order is on the right track in that way.”

The order is a threat to public lands, countered Zack Porter, the executive director of Standing Trees, which advocates for protecting New England’s native forests.

“They’re trying to seize power that does not belong to the executive branch,” Porter said. “It does not impact, as far as we can tell, current projects that have already been passed. It’s interesting that this call to increase logging is happening at the same time they are reducing the workforce at the U.S. Forest Service.” 

Porter predicted court battles over the move. “Lawsuits are coming,” he said.

As Vermont’s national forest remains at the center of the unfolding debate, the question of how to balance ecological stewardship with economic opportunity continues to divide communities. 

The order runs counter to the public interest and Vermonters’ reverence for the forest that bears their state’s nickname, Porter said. 

“This emergency declaration is the Trump administration throwing red meat to its base,” he said. “But they’re misreading the public because Vermonters and Americans at large love their public land, Republican or Democrat.”

That’s not how Bell sees the executive order, though. 

“Much of the wood products industry has been on its heels for decades, and whatever you think of the current administration, it’s fair to say many of us feel encouraged by this executive order and hope it contributes to recovery and growth in our local and regional economy,” Bell said.

Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship