Forest Service gives one week to weigh in on logging 5,000 acres of the Akawa Butte burn area

The U.S. Forest Service wants to log roughly 5,000 acres in the Deschutes National Forest where the Akawa Butte Fire burned this summer, and it gave tribes, counties, and the public one week to respond. The comment period closes just before midnight Monday. Similar projects typically allow 30 days.

The proposal relies on a new Trump administration policy that lets the Forest Service fast-track logging in recently burned forests. Agency spokesperson Kaitlyn Webb said removing dead and dying trees reduces wildfire risk to nearby communities and makes future firefighting safer. "We live in a fire-prone landscape here in Central Oregon," she said. "More fires will occur in this area in the future."

The project includes 37 miles of roadsides — about 1,340 acres — where loggers would not be required to leave any dead, standing trees behind. On another 3,580 acres of commercial logging, loggers would need to leave three to four snags per acre. Erik Fernandez, wilderness program manager at Oregon Wild, called that "functionally a clear-cut." The remaining snags would be exposed, he said, and likely fall over.

Logging burned forests is contentious. Many of Oregon's native plants and animals depend on wildfire, and removing dead and dying trees can interrupt natural recovery or strip wildlife of food and shelter. Fernandez said the project "may be the first of many where we see excessive logging on public lands after a fire with near-zero public process."

Earlier this year, the Forest Service published a blanket environmental assessment covering logging's effects on national forests after wildfires. The agency usually conducts a separate assessment for each timber sale, so biologists can evaluate a specific forest's burn severity, vegetation, and habitat needs before logging proceeds.

Timber groups have backed the new policy. Nick Smith, spokesperson for the American Forest Resource Council, said there is a limited window to recover usable timber before it degrades and to begin restoring burned forests. He said his group supports using analysis already completed and "moving forward without unnecessary delay."

The one-week comment window is the detail that distinguishes this project from ordinary post-fire salvage sales. A process that normally takes a month has been compressed to seven days, on a landscape the reader can see from town, under a policy designed to skip the site-specific environmental review that used to come first.