One purpose of the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), passed by Congress in 1976, was to address the growing controversial practice of clearcutting on U.S. national forests. Clearcut logging involves removing all or most trees over a given stand, to be sold as timber. The practice inflicts significant damage to the other resources found in natural forest ecosystems. NFMA limited the size of clearcuts on most national forests in the western U.S. to 40 acres, but the law also contained loopholes.

In recent years Friends of the Clearwater noticed a growing trend in national forests of the Northern Region exploiting NFMA’s clearcutting loopholes. Our staff investigated and prepared a report in 2021.

Our report revealed a drastic increase of requests from Forest Supervisors to the Regional Forester, who is authorized to approve such exceptions to the 40-acre limit. Total acres of these “supersized clearcuts” in the Northern Region averaged less than 10,000 acres annually from 2013-2018, but ballooned to exceed 32,000 acres in 2020. We found not a single instance of a request being denied by Regional Forester Leanne Marten.

Read the embedded report below, or scroll to the bottom of the page to download the PDF.