Stanford Memorial Church, The Crown Jewel of Stanford, Wednesday, April 9th, 2025
By Greg Wong | Examiner staff writer |
52 mins ago
Muir Woods north of San Francisco won’t be subject to a push by President Donald Trump’s administration to expand logging on federal lands — and neither is any other national park.
National parks and national forests are separate sets of lands under the oversight of different federal agencies, and it is the national forest system — not the national parks — that is subject to the Department of Agriculture’s directive to open up roughly 112 million acres of national land to the practice of cutting down and converting trees into timber.
The National Park Service, under the Department of the Interior, is responsible for 433 parks totaling 85 million acres, all of which are set aside for preservation. U.S. Forest Service land, meanwhile, has multiple uses that include recreation and lumber production.
In a statement, the agency said Trump’s directive to loosen logging restrictions “currently” won’t “directly impact” Muir Woods’ long preserved grove of redwood trees. A spokesperson said the agency ”won’t speculate on any future or indirect effects” of the logging push.
The Department of Agriculture earlier this month released an emergency directive which will open up around 60% of the forest owned by the U.S. Forest Service to logging practices in order to boost the nation’s timber economy and mitigate wildfire risks.
Scientists have questioned whether such policies can actually accomplish the latter. Some argue it will actually add to wildfire risk, not reduce it.
Why Trump's logging push isn't coming for Muir Woods
Greg