Critical Context

To help you understand the executive orders issued by the White House earlier this week, we’ll outline important context about public land management and the history of timber harvesting on public land. As a reminder, The U.S. Forest Service is a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that manages 193 million acres of public land, including national forests. The Department of the Interior, which includes the Bureau of Land Management and the Park Service manages roughly 20% of the total acreage in the United States, including 400 national parks, 560 national wildlife refuges and nearly 250 million acres of other public lands. 

Public land once accounted for a large portion of the timber going to lumber mills in the US South and especially in the West and Intermountain West.  Environmental regulation and consideration for other public goods that those lands provide have contributed to a dramatic reduction in timber harvest on public lands since the 1980s. Reducing red-tape could help with things like the speed of applying treatments for fire risk reduction but may also minimize consideration for public goods like wildlife and recreation. For landowners, the influx of new supply will affect the demand and prices they’ll receive for their timber.

Map of Public Land in The United States

What Happened?

On March 1, 2025, two executive orders were issued by the White House, signaling a major shift in U.S. timber policy. These directives, “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production” and “Addressing the Threat to National Security from Imports of Timber, Lumber”, aim to increase domestic timber supply, reduce reliance on foreign imports, and streamline the execution of forestry projects on public land. While these policies are designed to boost national timber production on public land, they carry important implications for private forest landowners who rely on timber revenue. We recently highlighted the potential impacts of tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China on private landowners and encourage you to read that piece first for more important context. These new announcements from The White House add additional complexity to the story of how policy changes may affect forest landowners in the years to come.

The Orders, Explained

Order 1: Addressing The Threat To National Security from Imports of Timber, Lumber

Summary: This order directs the Secretary of Commerce to investigate the national security implications of timber and lumber imports, particularly focusing on supply-demand dynamics, foreign subsidies, and trade policies.

Actions:

• The Secretary of Commerce will initiate an investigation into domestic trade policies to determine the security of imports of timber, lumber, and other forest products
• The Secretary will include in their analysis:
  • Current and projected domestic demand for timber and lumber
  • How much of the domestic demand can be met with domestic production
  • The role of other countries in meeting domestic demand
  • The impact of foreign government policies like subsidies on domestic timber market competitiveness
  • The feasibility of increasing domestic production to meet demand
  • The impact of current trade policies and whether additional measures would be needed to protect national security
• The Secretary of Commerce will meet with the Secretary of Defense and other agency heads to evaluate national security risks related to the timber and lumber supply chain
• Within 270 days, the report findings must be brought to the President alongside any policy recommendations.

Order 2: Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production

Summary: This order aims to increase domestic timber production by streamlining regulations, expediting forest management projects, and setting annual timber sale targets for federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

Actions:

• Within 30 days, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture must issue new guidance to increase timber production, reduce time to deliver timber, and reduce supply uncertainty.
• Within 60 days, the Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce will develop a strategy to speed up approval of forestry projects. The Secretary of the Interior will also examine ways to streamline consultation under the Endangered Species Act.
• Within 90 days, the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture will submit a 4-year plan to the President, including a target amount of timber offered for sale from federal lands.
• Within 120 days, the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture must complete the Whitebark Pine Rangewide Programmatic Consultation
• Within 180 days, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture shall consider adopting categorical exclusions to streamline administrative approvals for forestry projects including timber production and wildfire risk reduction.
• Within 280 days, the Secretary of the Interior shall consider and establish a new categorical exclusion for timber thinning and re-establish a categorical exclusion for timber salvage activities. 
• The order in general calls for a review and elimination of any policies that cause delays in the production of timber.

Key Takeaways for Private Forest Landowners

While these orders are largely directed at the management of public land, they have implications for private forest landowners who rely on timber revenue. The Secretary of Commerce should include an analysis of private forests’ role in supporting the domestic timber supply chain in their report to the President. Timber sales are an important cash flow generator for private landowners and this should not be overlooked. The outcome of that analysis and recommendations that come from it will have a large impact on the market dynamics for private forest landowners.

Possible outcomes: 

1. Timber demand and prices private LOs see could drop as new supply hits the market from public land. 

2. However, LOs in places that have seen mill infrastructure close or curtail in the last 40 years may see new market opportunities as supply guarantees bring in private investment for new mills and harvesting infrastructure. 

3. Bottlenecks in domestic processing capacity will be highlighted, especially in regions like the Intermountain West where the ratio of public land with highly stocked acreage to viable mills is extremely high. It’s one thing to harvest timber from public land but an entirely different problem to have the supply chain to transport and process that timber. In addition to infrastructure being a bottleneck, labor shortages on both the production side and within the Forest Service to administrate sales may quickly become a challenge.

4. A dramatic reduction in red-tape around harvesting could allow for more rapid management of fire risk and growth in some rural economies. However, public concerns for wildlife, water, recreation, etc. impacts from harvest operations are valid and failure to address those concerns through this process could spark significant backlash. Looking at public land exclusively as a solution to commodity supply chain challenges could put the other long-term benefits that these public lands provide at risk.

NCX is closely monitoring all new policy developments so that you can be up to date on all the threats and opportunities to your land. If you’d like to speak with our team of advisors about how policy changes may affect your forest, do not hesitate to reach out at landowners@ncx.com.