Our land management agencies are now being caught in the act, greenlighting logging projects in our national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas.
Raising the question: how long has this really been happening under the radar?
Over the past few decades, so-called “hazardous fuels” treatments — like thinning (logging), mowing, and mastication — have been steadily marketed to the public as the solution for “catastrophic wildfire.” This narrative, now widely accepted, claims that fire suppression has made forests unnaturally dense and unhealthy, and that without aggressive intervention, they will burn too intensely. But this story is misleading.
Fire ecologists have shown that in many forest types, particularly in the West, high-and mixed-intensity fire is not only natural – it’s necessary. These fires regenerate forests, maintain biodiversity, and create critical wildlife habitat. The idea that forests must be “managed” or “thinned” to be “healthy” or “resilient” is a logging industry myth dressed up as public safety.
And the myth has paved the way for mechanical treatments in even the most protected wildlands.
Research by leading fire scientist Dr. Jack Cohen has shown that the real risk to homes during wildfire comes from flammable materials within the immediate 100 feet around them – not in the intensity of the fire or so called “fuel loads” in forests. In fact, fire intensity in wildlands tells us very little about whether homes will ignite.
Fire only becomes catastrophic when lives or homes are lost.
Meanwhile, the very treatments meant to “reduce fuel loads” backfire – thinning and logging dry out forests, introducing invasive grasses, and disrupting natural microclimates, exacerbating future fire behavior. These activities also release substantial carbon emissions, far exceeding what would have been emitted by fire alone, undermining climate goals and further destabilizing forest ecosystems.
Yet the hazardous fuels paradigm persists. It diverts attention and funding away from proven home-focused safety measures, all while reinforcing a false sense of security – as if chainsaws in the backcountry will stop firestorms driven by drought, heatwaves, and high winds.
Even National Parks Are Falling For It
The industrial forestry paradigm is here and it is deeply entrenched. Apparently, even the National Park Service is not immune to its beck and call. Once committed to preservation, the agency now seems driven by a kind of ecological FOMO, eager to participate in the dominant narrative of ‘active management.’ But this impulse comes with dire consequences. Trading restraint for intervention is like playing Russian Roulette with ecosystem resilience: every new logging project in supposed protected landscape risks permanent ecological damage. The Park Service shouldn’t be following harmful and foolish trends, it should be resisting them.
We need an intervention before the agency loses its way entirely.
Why Are They Logging in “Protected” Areas?
The push to log in supposedly “protected areas” under the guise of hazardous fuels reduction is particularly troubling because these lands are explicitly designated to protect ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural processes, not to serve as timber supplies or ineffectual firebreaks.
Logging in these areas undermines their core purpose by disrupting habitat, introducing invasive species, compacting soils, and degrading water and air quality — all while failing to meaningfully reduce wildfire risk to human communities.
These landscapes are meant to serve as refuges for species and as benchmarks of ecological integrity, yet the pervasive hazardous fuels narrative has allowed industrial-scale interventions even here.
Too often this logging occurs after wildfire — precisely when the forest is already healing, and when nature should be left alone to regenerate on its own terms. Agencies and lawmakers frequently label these fires as “unnaturally severe,” but peer-reviewed studies show that mixed and high-intensity fire is natural and essential process in many ecosystems. Post-fire logging interrupts this process, delays natural regeneration, harms recovering wildlife, and undermines the very ecological benefits fire provides.
Rather than confronting the real threats — such as reckless development in fire-prone areas and increasing impacts of fossil-fueled warming—agencies continue to sacrifice the very places meant to remain wild for misguided treatments that betray their mandate of preservation.
These projects profoundly change the characters of wild places. Visitors come seeking an escape from industrial development — to experience nature as it is meant to be: wild and intact. Instead, they encounter degraded landscapes, heavy machinery, and the harsh noise of chainsaws. This degradation not only damages ecosystems but inflicts emotional and spiritual wounds on those who visit.
What Will They Try Next?
If left unchallenged, this kind of industrial “management” is likely to expand even deeper into the most remote and ecologically sensitive areas of our public lands. Already justified in national parks, monuments, and wilderness under the banner of “fuels reduction,” such projects could encroach further into designated wilderness study areas, roadless areas, and critical habitats — places once thought untouchable.
As habitats dwindle, climate change accelerates and political pressure mounts to “do something” about wildfire, agencies will most likely double down on logging and thinning in increasingly wild and intact landscapes – continuing to exploit fears of “megafires” and high-intensity burns as justification for destructive interventions. They prioritize visible, mechanical interventions over meaningful climate adaptation – like proforestation – or effective home and community-focused risk reduction.
This trajectory risks normalizing chainsaws and bulldozers even in the heart of protected wildlands, eroding the very idea of wilderness and diminishing the natural character of lands that are supposed to be protected.
Rallying Cry: Protect Public Lands by Letting Them Be Wild
Public lands are one of the rare issues that have the potential to unite across political divides. Yet, the public conversation is clouded by decades of disinformation — from Smokey Bear campaigns that oversimplified fire’s role, to agency spin that frames constant “management” as the only way to protect these places.
The fact is: fire is a natural, essential force across many ecosystems designated as public lands — it is part of their life cycle, not a crisis to be endlessly “fixed.” Instead of succumbing to the illusion that every inch of these landscapes must be controlled and manipulated, we should be demanding stronger protections that give wild places the freedom to govern themselves on their own ecological terms.
This means saying no to logging, bulldozers, and fossil-fuel burning machinery masquerading as “restoration.” It means rejecting the lie that thinning saves forests – and embracing science that shows letting forests grow and regenerate on their own is the best path forward.
Our public lands should never be sold to the lowest bidder. And they shouldn't be reduced to timber stands or fuelbreaks. Nor should they be stripped of their wildness in the name of safety theater.
It’s time for the public to wake up — to reject false solutions, embrace ecological truth, and defend our wild places from those who would log them in the name of protection.
Call to Action
It’s time to reject false solutions like industrial logging disguised as fire prevention. Instead, we must demand science-based policies that protect intact ecosystems, make communities safer through proven home-hardening measures and defensible space, and address the real drivers of wildfire risk.
Tell your elected officials:
No more logging in protected areas.
Prioritize fire-safe communities—not timber industry profits.
Preserve the full spectrum of forest ecosystems—from post-fire renewal to old-growth stability—because resilience lies in biodiversity, not in thinning forests to uniformity.
Support legislation that puts people and ecosystems first, like Rep. Huffman’s H.R. 582 and Rep. Kiley’s H.R. 948, which focus on community safety and practical wildfire defense, not backdoor logging incentives.
Our public lands should be preserved for their biodiversity, beauty, and cultural significance — not turned into sacrifice zones for short-term extraction.
Have you noticed unnatural interventions — like aggressive thinning or road-building — in your favorite national park or public forest? You’re not alone. Speak up today and help defend the wild places that can’t speak for themselves.
An (Incomplete) List of Known Logging and Vegetation Management Projects in Our Parks, Monuments, and Wilderness Areas.
Keep in mind the tricky language used by the National Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management below. Just call it logging, please…
Yosemite National Park, California
Yosemite Valley has seen a rise in “active management” efforts—mechanical thinning, pile burning, and prescribed fire—aimed at reducing “hazardous fuels” along roads and near key facilities. In particular, the Merced Grove project has involved thinning and biomass removal around the giant sequoia grove and adjacent roads (~120 acres total), targeting small and large conifers, dead trees, and forest litter to prepare for prescribed burns. Additionally, the ongoing Biomass Removal and Scenic Vista program (2022–2026) is removing dead and downed wood along Yosemite Valley corridors and the Merced Grove trail, creating fuel breaks often within 200 ft of roads and trails.
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
Bryce Canyon has recently ramped up “active management” near high-use areas like the Lodge, housing, and Rainbow Point, where park crews have used mechanical thinning (chainsaws, hand tools) to reduce tree density, followed by pile burning during winter months claiming to limit fire risk. This was the largest mechanical fuel-reduction effort in park history, involving hundreds of acres of ponderosa pine thinned from ~200–300 down to 20–50 trees per acre, with debris stacked and burned to protect structures.
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Rocky Mountain National Park is implementing forest thinning and pile burning projects to “reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health.” According to the National Park Service, “fire managers thin overly dense forest stands by cutting trees and shrubs and piling the resulting woody material,” which is later burned under safe conditions. These treatments have occurred in areas such as Deer Mountain, Lily Lake, and Wild Basin, with the goal of reducing “the potential for high-intensity wildfire near park infrastructure and adjacent communities.” The agency notes that “pile burning reduces hazardous fuels on the ground and helps create conditions that allow for lower intensity wildfires that are easier to manage.” For more information, see the park’s Fuels Treatment Projects page.
Cascade-Siskyou National Monument, Oregon
Cascade–Siskiyou National Monument is conducting forest thinning and hand-pile burning treatments to “reduce hazardous fuels and restore natural forest structure.” According to the Resource Management Plan, these treatments include “interim fuels treatments (e.g., thinning and hand pile and burn)” in areas “highly departed from natural conditions, prior to application of prescribed fire.” The Adaptive Management Strategy further explains that thinning small-diameter trees and surface fuels will help reintroduce fire as a natural process while meeting “ecological restoration” goals. Under the monument’s proclamation, vegetation removal is only permitted when it is “part of an authorized science-based ecological restoration project” intended to enhance protection and old growth, as outlined in the BLM’s Interim Management Memorandum.
Great Basin National Park, Nevada
Great Basin National Park is implementing forest thinning and pile burning as part of its Fire Management Plan, which authorizes fuels reduction on approximately 21,000 acres over the next decade. The plan calls for the use of “mechanical and manual means” to thin dense understory vegetation, followed by the creation and burning of hand piles under controlled conditions. These treatments are designed to “reduce wildfire risk and restore fire-adapted ecosystems,” including sagebrush, aspen, and ponderosa pine communities. According to the park, these efforts will also support “meadow restoration and improve overall ecological resilience.” The park’s most recent project involved a hand-pile burning operation at Lehman Flats, where crews burned slash from thinning treatments to “reduce hazardous fuels and help restore natural fire processes.”
Lassen Volcanic National Park, California
Lassen Volcanic National Park is implementing forest thinning and hand-pile burning as part of its Northwest Gateway Forest Restoration Project, which focuses on areas around Manzanita Lake and Lost Creek. The project involves a “one-time entry with mechanized equipment to reduce live understory and ladder fuels,” followed by prescribed fire 3–5 years later to restore natural fire regimes. According to the park’s Fire Management Plan, manual treatments using hand or power tools are also used to create piles of woody debris, which are then burned to “reduce fuel loads and protect park infrastructure.”
Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, California
“Forest treatments” are occurring within designated wilderness areas of the giant sequoia groves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Following the 2020 Castle Fire and 2021 KNP Complex Fire, the National Park Service initiated “emergency actions” in several remote groves — many of which lie partly or entirely within wilderness—to “reduce hazardous fuels” and “protect” surviving sequoias. These treatments include hand-thinning of trees and brush, pile burning, broadcast prescribed fire, and targeted “reforestation.” In January–February 2023, crews conducted intensive pile burns in the Big Stump area of Grant Grove and the Lodgepole region of Giant Forest, disposing of woody debris generated by earlier thinning in order to establish a zone of “reduced fuel” near visitor facilities.
The National Park Service invoked emergency exemptions under the Wilderness Act to justify the work, citing the urgent threat of post-fire recovery and ecosystem collapse. However, the interventions have sparked controversy and litigation from conservation groups.
Sequoia National Monument, California
The U.S. Forest Service is implementing “emergency fuels reduction treatments” across approximately 13,377 acres within Giant Sequoia National Monument, focused on “removing surface and ladder fuels” through both hand cutting and mechanical thinning of both small and large trees — followed by prescribed or hand‑pile burning of slash to “protect giant sequoia groves from high-severity wildfire threats” (USDA press release). These treatments aim to “safeguard 12 groves” in areas adjacent to lands burned in the Windy and KNP Complex Fires, as part of an “emergency response” to escalating fire risk and evidence of widespread sequoia mortality (debunked) in “untreated” groves. If you want to read more.
Olympic National Park, Washington
Olympic National Park’s updated fire strategy uses “mechanical thinning and pile burning” to “restore natural fuel levels and ecosystem function”: as the park explains, fire managers “use three tools to mimic fire’s natural function in the ecosystem: prescribed fire, mechanical thinning, and wildland fire managed for resource benefit” (NPS Fire Management overview). After manually removing “dense understory and surface fuels,” crews consolidate woody debris into piles that are later burned. Monitoring protocols are in place to evaluate these treatments, “ensuring effectiveness” and “minimal impact on wilderness character.”
Conclusion
National parks and wilderness areas are the crown jewel of our public lands system. They should be treated with respect and honored. The truth is, nature can manage itself — but only if we let it be. When we intervene, it reflects poorly back on us. These places — and the ecosystems and wildlife they contain — have so much to teach us. But how can we learn if we’re too busy trying to “improve” upon them?
These places aren’t just scenery. They’re biodiversity strongholds, climate stabilizers, places of renewal and reverence. And they’re being looted in broad daylight. But here we are… They turned the public trust into a blank check for destruction.
But the tide is turning. Scientists, communities, and public land defenders are rising up–and making change. The truth is on our side. And so are the people. Raise your voice. Defend what’s wild. Because the fate of our public lands–and all they protect–is inseparable from our own.
We’d love nothing more than to be out of a job to no longer have to watchdog the very agencies meant to protect our public lands.
Adam Bronstein hosts and produces Our Public Lands Podcast & Jennifer Mamola is Policy and Advocacy Director with the John Muir Project
We can’t replace what we’ve lost but we must stop these fools before it’s all gone.
I’m disgusted and we need to halt this before they completely level all the forests that remain