Trump’s War on the Forests
By 
Trumpism is devastating our forests for profit.
When the Forest Service approved the sale of nearly 70 acres for commercial logging in southern Illinois’ Shawnee National Forest in late 2024, Sam Stearns was furious. The Shawnee is the only national forest in the state, and one of the smallest in the nation. The agency initially billed the so-called McCormick Oak-Hickory Restoration Project timber sale as a “thinning” operation to remove older trees and make room for younger saplings. Logging operations contribute to habitat loss, and Stearns found the Forest Service’s justification lacking.
“Never in the history of this planet has a forest been logged back to health,” said the 71-year-old Stearns.
Stearns, who is the founder of the preservation group Friends of Bell Smith Spring, planned to oppose the sale. He began keeping an eye out for the agency’s public comment period, which provided residents like him an opportunity to voice their concerns. For months, he and other local environmentalists scoured the web and local newspapers for mentions of the sale to prepare for the comment period, but the McCormick Project never turned up.
It would turn out that the Forest Service advertised the project under a completely different name. The sale was titled “V-Plow,” and by the time advocates realized it, they were already a week into the project’s three-week comment period. In the past, advocates said comment periods for logging operations lasted as long as 45 days. Court documents would later reveal that the agency initially didn’t receive any bids. It eventually awarded the contract to an interested buyer in Kentucky in June 2025.
The following month, Stearns and other environmentalists sued the agency to block the plan. They cited the presence of endangered bats and potential impacts to a nearby national natural landmark and alleged that the Forest Service had violated the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Earlier this fall, a federal judge temporarily blocked the project before allowing the logging to proceed. The case is still pending, and a spokesperson for the Forest Service declined to comment due to the ongoing litigation.
The legal battle is part of a broader clash between fast-tracking projects and ensuring environmental reviews as required by federal law. NEPA mandates that federal agencies consider the environmental impacts of projects, but it includes a provision for “categorical exclusions” that let agencies bypass full reviews and limit public participation for minor proposals.