The US Forest Service will ramp up harvest and production inside US forests and is aiming to sell more than 4 billion board feet of lumber from forests by 2028. That is according to the US Forest Service’s National Active Forest Management Strategy, a new strategy that will remove regulatory barriers and priortise longer term harvest contracts to increase timber harvest, improve forest health and productivity, reduce wildfire risk, and support prosperity in forest communities.
Announced by Brooke Rollins, US Secretary of Agriculture, the strategy is a key pillar in supporting Trump’s Executive Order: Immediate Expansion of Timber Production, streamlining regulations, leveraging emergency authorities, and expediting approvals to ensure faster access to timber resources.
“President Trump is committed to cutting red tape, rolling back burdensome regulations and unleashing the potential of America’s abundant natural resources,” according to Rollins, who said the USDA is investing $200m into production. “This is a win for consumers who will see better prices with American-grown products, and a win for forest management, which will help keep forests safer and reduce wildfire risk.”
“Not only will this help our staff on the ground better carry out the mission of protecting lives, livelihoods and resources, it will support jobs in rural America and reduce our reliance on foreign lumber imports.”
Wood Central understands the plan will use tools like the Good Neighbour Authority, supporting efforts to work across jurisdictions and property lines to improve forest health and grow rural communities:
“This investment also focuses on innovative wood products like cross-laminated timber, which, due to its strength in comparison to steel, is used in commercial building construction,” according to a statement attributed to Rollins. “Similarly, active management often creates byproducts with a low conventional wood market value, but are still useful in wood energy, pellets, and other biomass applications.”
Cut, Baby, Cut: Reducing reliance on lumber imports is incredibly challenging
Earlier this month, Wood Central reported that the administration would find it incredibly challenging for federal timber harvest to offset Canadian wood products in the coming years,” with harvests needing to reach 45-year highs to offset reliance on structural timbers used in homebuilding. That is according to Austin Lamica from Fastmarkets, who said the United States would need to increase federal timber harvests by about 450% to meet the shortfall in Canadian plywood, OSB, and softwood lumber, which make up vast volumes of timber used in single—and multi-family housing.
“Theoretically, the US federal lands have ample timber supplies to offset the volume of softwood lumber imported from Canada,” he said. But, “increasing federal timber harvests by (at least) 450% may be a challenge as many headwinds, aside from those related to lumber production capacity, may limit the government’s ability to ramp up timber production.”
- To learn more about the sweeping powers now granted to the US Department of Agriculture to salvage wood across more than 112,000,000 acres of national forests, click here for Wood Central’s article from April.
