Seattle, WA (Grist)

In an emergency directive issued late last week, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced her department's plan to expand logging and timber production by 25 percent and, in the process, dismantle the half-a-century-old environmental review system that has blocked the federal government from finalizing major decisions concerning national forest lands without public insight.

Under Rollins' direction, and following an earlier executive order signed by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Forest Service would carry out the plan that designates 67 million acres of national forest lands as high or very high wildfire risk, classifies another 79 million acres as being in a state of declining forest health, and labels 34 million acres as at risk of wildfi

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