The Trump administration has proposed significantly shifting management of the nation’s public lands toward producing more revenue.
President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have issued orders aimed at expediting energy production on federal lands. Burgum has repeatedly referred to federal lands as America’s “balance sheet,” pushing for increased oil and gas extraction, logging and mining.
The administration also wants to roll back the Roadless Rule, which prohibits logging on millions of acres of national forests. Meanwhile, some congressional Republicans have pushed bills to sell off millions of federal acres.
Other administration proposals include transferring more federal responsibilities — such as disaster recovery — to the states, changing oversight of federal firefighters, and making significant cuts to federal lands agencies.
These proposals especially affect Western states, where 90% of federal lands are located. In Washington state, nearly 30% of land is owned by the federal government.
Stateline reporter Alex Brown recently interviewed Dave Upthegrove, Washington’s public lands commissioner, to ask how these proposals and other federal changes are playing out on the ground. In addition to managing forests on state land, the Department of Natural Resources, which Upthegrove helms, is Washington’s lead wildfire-fighting agency.
Elected commissioner last year, the Democrat previously served as a state representative in the Washington House and on the King County Council.
This interview has been condensed for length and edited for clarity.
Selling public lands
Q: Leaders in Trump’s administration have talked about public lands as America’s balance sheet and called for some lands to be sold off to bring in revenue. Here in Washington state, you’re in the middle of similar debates about the role of public lands for revenue or conservation. At a time when budgets are tight and some are looking at public lands as assets that can be sold or managed to maximize their economic value, what is your view of the purpose of public lands, including potentially selling them for revenue?
A: Our state and federal lands belong to we, the people. They’re public lands, our lands, and they need to be managed in the public interest for all the people of the state or in the nation. And I think that’s the vision here in Washington.
The president’s plan to clear-cut national forests to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy is offensive and it sells out future generations. We’re seeing efforts to gut the public lands rule, which [would] put mining and drilling ahead of conservation and recreation, repealing the Roadless Rule [which would threaten] protected forests with industrial logging and development. And we need to manage these lands for the broader benefits.
Land revenue for schools
Q: Your agency oversees millions of acres of trust lands. In many Western states, these lands provide important revenue for schools and local governments and support economic sectors such as logging and mining. Your plans to conserve some older forests have drawn criticism from both timber companies and environmental groups who feel it either goes too far or not far enough. Do you see a way for Western states to manage that tension between the economic and environmental values of these trust lands?
A: We need to always find the right balance, and we also need to acknowledge our world is changing. We’re seeing the impacts of climate change now. We’re seeing a rapid loss in biodiversity. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has always led the way in sustainable management, and I want us to continue to lead the world and do more, and I believe we can innovate and diversify how we generate revenue from these lands.
What that means is we will continue to have a strong, robust, healthy wood products industry in Washington state for generations to come. … I think there is strong public support for the values those forests bring, in addition to wood products. So I think we are pursuing an approach that strikes the appropriate balance.
That tension will always be there for any trust manager. Any land manager in any Western state will always have those competing values.
Q: How viable are carbon credits or ecosystem services as a revenue source compared to timber harvests?
A: Currently, carbon credits don’t generate the same amount of money that wood products do, so they would be just one part of a larger strategy. Other tools that could be employed as we innovate and diversify include more ecological forestry, such as thinning for forest health.
An important part of my vision also is the acquisition of replacement timber lands. It is not unusual for this agency to acquire property with state legislative funds, and I would like to target opportunities to acquire private timber lands at risk of conversion. For example, we are currently in the middle of a transaction purchasing 6,000 acres on an area called Cle Elum Ridge. And were we not purchasing that, it likely would become what I call McMansions, housing for the wealthy out in a rural area. Instead, we’re going to keep it as a working forest.
I think a combination of ecological forestry, ecosystem services and replacement timber lands, all taken together, can help us meet those trust responsibilities.
Wildfire immigration raid
Q: Shifting gears a bit, there were national headlines this summer following the immigration raid at the Bear Gulch Fire here in Washington state. How surprised were you to see federal immigration officials targeting wildfire crews?
A: I was shocked. I was offended. Regardless of what someone thinks about immigration policy, enforcing visas at the site of an active, ongoing emergency is irresponsible.
I think it just plays into unnecessary fear that’s being generated intentionally by this administration. But even if there were people sympathetic to the president’s views on immigration, I think this really turned a lot of people off. You know, these were firefighters working hard to keep us safe, and active in the middle of an emergency.
And the more I learn about it, the more upset I am about it.
Q: Do you have concerns about the California-based incident management team that was overseeing the fire and their potential role in setting up that raid? Would you have qualms about that team returning to Washington or overseeing crews from your agency?
A: Yes. I don’t know enough to make decisions, final decisions, but I think concerns is a good word. I don’t want members of critical incident management teams calling in immigration officials during a fire. If they had concerns, they could have passed that along at the conclusion of the incident, and that could have been dealt with.
It wasn’t their job to go investigate people’s visas. I know that they have said this was a timesheet issue where they discovered this, but I’m concerned that that was a pretext for calling in immigration officials. Because I don’t know all of the details and not able to verify anything, we’ve not taken any steps, but I’m absolutely concerned about those individuals working on fires.
Q: Is there concern that this could create a culture of fear or even lead to reduced capacity if some crews are scared to deploy or fear they might be targeted?
A: Yes. I think overall, not just the targeting of firefighters, but the whole federal strategy appears to be a desire to create fear and chaos intentionally, and this is just that effort spilling into the wildfire space.
We expect people who work for us to be working legally. We believe in the rule of law at this agency, but how that is enforced is important. And when someone is out there on the fire working, that’s not the time and place to do that.
There’s no reason they couldn’t have contacted these individuals after the fire and questioned them about their visa status, if immigration officials had concerns. Quite frankly, for members of that critical incident management team, it’s none of their business.
Effects of funding cuts
Q: President Trump has made significant cuts at the U.S. Forest Service and other land management agencies, both to staffing as well as grant programs and other funding sources. Your agency obviously works extensively with the Forest Service on its forest health plan and other forestry issues. How significantly have these federal cuts affected your agency’s work and the forest health plan in Washington?
A: They create a lot of uncertainty. We had no communication from the federal government as to their plans. Many of our grants got suddenly turned off without notice, most of them turned back on again. It’s made it very difficult for us to plan our work. We don’t know whether we should keep spending money sometimes, because we don’t know if we’ll get reimbursed, even if we have a signed contract.
A lot of our grants are pass-through funds to other entities, like local governments, fire departments. They submit receipts to us. We pay them back. We submit them to the federal government. We get paid back. We’ve had to make decisions on a daily basis as to what to continue and when to tell people to stop working.
We also are beginning to see impacts from the mass firing of employees at some of these agencies. We had fewer critical incident management teams nationally this year in the fire services in large part due to the reduced staffing levels at these federal agencies. Fortunately, our fire season was able to accommodate that, but it presented risks.
More logging
Q: Trump has also called for an increase in logging on federal lands. You said you’d be open to collaborating on more forest health and wildfire resilience-type work. What have you seen so far about how the feds’ plan to log more timber? And given the cuts we’ve seen, is that even possible with the reduced staffing that they have?
A: I don’t know. We’ve not seen any meaningful movement in that direction. I think they’re kidding themselves if they can lay off a whole bunch of foresters [and] at the same time increase their production. So I think it’s a lot of posturing and bluster on the part of the president.
There’s certainly room to better manage some of these national forests, and we want to be a part of that. We’ve partnered on over 25,000 acres in Washington state through the Good Neighbor agreement, doing forest restoration, forest health and other good work to help manage these forests, including generating wood products in the process.
Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.
This story was originally published in the Washington State Standard.
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