American Loggers Council Letter Urges Trump To Act Quickly

American Loggers Council along with American Biomass Energy Assn. and Forest Landowners Assn. has circulated a “stakeholder” letter addressed to President Trump and other key policymakers, and invited recipients to sign onto the letter, which highlights the alarming trend of rising natural disasters and mill closures across the nation and their impacts on landowners, logging businesses, and the forest products sector.

Here are some excerpts from the letter:

“On March 1st, you signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to boost the domestic production of timber and wood products—a clear recognition that working forests are critical to our economic resilience, housing supply, consumer products, energy production, and national security. Today, that directive faces unprecedented headwinds.

Hurricane Helene inflicted significant timber losses in several Southern states, including $1.28 billion in losses, in Georgia alone. Moreover, the recent closure of two mills in Savannah and Riceboro, Ga. have eliminated nearly 1,100 jobs and destabilized the very heart of the forestry value chain in those communities. These blows are the latest in an alarming national trend: since 2014, more than 31 pulp and paper mills have closed across the country, removing at least 42 million tons of pulpwood demand and $20.9 billion in sales and manufacturing from the U.S. timber economy. This is leaving communities across America without markets, jobs, or the certainty needed to keep forests in forests.

Mill closures nationwide are stripping markets from landowners and rural workers, leaving them without outlets for their timber. Unfair foreign trade practices undercut U.S. producers and distort global markets, eroding our ability to compete. Together, these forces are pushing many landowners to exit forestry altogether. If forests areabandoned or converted, the consequences for our domestic timber supply, markets for housing, consumer products, and energy, rural livelihoods, and environmental security will be severe. This is not just a regional concern—it is a national crisis.”

The letter emphasizes three immediate steps the Trump Administration can take.

1. Advance the Disaster Reforestation Act: Allow landowners to deduct their timber lost to natural disasters, so they can replant and keep forests as forests after events like Helene and catastrophic wildfires.

2. Expand the definition of qualifying woody biomass in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS): Clarifying and expanding the definition of woody biomass in the RFS so that small trees, harvest residuals, and mill residuals can be made into transportation fuel for aviation, shipping, and other applications, would open new markets for low-value wood, help wildfire prevention, improve forest health, and strengthen rural economies while increasing American energy production.

3. Promote biomass for electricity: Promoting biomass for electricity production to power homes and manufacturing would rapidly contribute to wildfire risk reduction and support the wood product supply chain, since biomass power producers are the nation’s largest users, by volume, of wood residuals.