The darkened sky in the early afternoon, the tornado sirens wailing as baseball-sized hail shattered windows and dented car roofs, sounding like a series of explosions as drivers hurried home at 4 p.m. last week — all of it felt like the eerie first scene in an apocalyptic movie. 

This is not a drill, I thought, watching the clouds tumbling and boiling overhead as my car radio and my phone began shrieking in unison and a robotic voice informed me that I should take shelter immediately from a tornado that was moving at 20 miles per hour directly toward my neighborhood. 

We’ve all grown accustomed to the low background hum of climate anxiety. Suddenly it’s as loud and immediate as the crack of a giant hailstone on the windshield. 

The changes to the planet we’ve been warned about for decades are suddenly hitting too close to home to ignore. Over the last year in Wisconsin we’ve endured smoke-filled skies from summer forest fires, massive floods, wild temperature swings and scarier, more serious storms. 

This should be a wakeup call. But instead of accelerating efforts to head off climate catastrophe, our federal government is canceling renewable energy contracts and pushing for more coal plants, more oil drilling, more toxic mining on public lands, undoing protections for clean air and water, and accelerating the destruction of our shared environment in order to extract resources and build more wealth for a handful of people in the short term. 

The price of this heedlessness is so enormous it hurts just to think about it. 

Two days after the hail storm and tornado warnings sent me and my neighbors scrambling for cover, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to allow sulfide mining in the Superior National Forest, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness — an inexpressibly beautiful place that is precious to my family, the scene of some of the most formative experiences of our girls’ childhood, and the most visited wilderness area in the U.S. The Forest Service spent years studying how acid mine drainage — the toxic byproduct of sulfide-ore mining — could contaminate the interconnected lakes and streams that make up the Boundary Waters. Once that contamination starts, there is no way to reverse it, which is why an overwhelming majority of Minnesotans weighed in against the mine, and the federal government blocked it. Until that protection was overturned last week.

Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith took a heroic stand on the Senate floor last Wednesday, arguing late into the night, trying to persuade her colleagues not just to hold off on destroying this pristine place, but to forgo using an obscure maneuver that, in a 50-49 vote, redefined land management and knocked down longstanding protections for every piece of national forest in the country. 

My colleague J. Patrick Coolican, editor of the Minnesota Reformer, described Smith pleading to an empty chamber, “I dearly hope the members of this body will think about their legacy in protecting the great places in this country.”

No future president can reinstate the mining ban that protected the Boundary Waters now that Congress used the obscure Congressional Review Act to strike it down. And it’s bigger than that. With their vote to open up mining near the Boundary Waters, “lawmakers have called into question the validity of every management plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service over the past several decades,” Alex Brown of Stateline reports. “That could result in legal chaos for thousands of permits covering logging, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation.” As Smith warned her Republican colleagues who want to protect the public lands they cherish in their home states, their vote means it’s now open season on those lands, too.

I couldn’t bear to talk with my daughters, who have spent every summer they can remember in the Boundary Waters, about the vote last week. 

But this week, Earth Week, it’s time to confront it. All is not lost. Just as they stood up to the masked federal agents who descended on Minneapolis to tear immigrant families apart, Minnesotans are organizing to fight Twin Metals, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chilean mining company Antofagasta, as it seeks state permits to open up its toxic mine. While mining proponents tout the mine as a job creator (ignoring the economic costs of destroying the nation’s most-visited wilderness), the Senate’s action mostly benefits a foreign mining company, which has a history of flouting environmental regulations and creating toxic spills in other countries, and which will likely sell the copper it extracts from Minnesota to China.

The least we Wisconsinites can do is to help our neighbors as they try to repel this deadly invasion and seizure of a priceless natural resource.

Friends of the Boundary Waters, based in Minnesota, is filing a lawsuit arguing that the congressional maneuver that opened up the mine is illegal. The group and its allies are also urging the Minnesota DNR to cancel Twin Metals’ leases for the mine, and pushing the Minnesota state legislature to ban mining in this sensitive area.

As Wisconsin Sen. Gaylor Nelson, the founder of Earth Day put it in his 1970 speech kicking off the modern environmental movement, protecting the environment is “not just an issue of survival, but an issue of how we survive.” 

“Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty,” he said. “….Our goal is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all human beings and all other living creatures. An environment without ugliness, without ghettos, without poverty, without discrimination, without hunger and without war.”

We need to protect that vision of life from the forces of greed and destruction that are engulfing us. We can’t let them write the end of the story.

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The U.S. Forest Service’s plan to close scores of research stations could threaten the nation’s wildfire readiness, many foresters fear, and erode decades of work to understand timber production, soil health, pests and diseases, watersheds and wildlife.

Late last month, the Forest Service announced plans to close 57 of its 77 research stations, located across 31 states, merging them into a single organization in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The agency described the move as a way to consolidate, not cut, the agency’s scientific work, and “unify research priorities.”

It’s unclear how many scientists will be affected by the transition, but it comes as part of a larger agency reorganization that is expected to move roughly 5,000 employees to new outposts. Forest Service leaders have framed the closures as a way to reduce the agency’s real estate footprint, citing a facilities budget Congress has shrunk, as opposed to curtailing its scientific work.

But many longtime foresters fear the closures will threaten vital research that has been the backbone of forest management for state agencies, timber companies and tribes. Many of the research stations slated for closure study fire behavior, forecast smoke dispersal and help inform evacuation decisions.

“The research arm of the Forest Service is one of the unsung heroes in forest management around the world,” said Mike Dombeck, who served as chief of the Forest Service under President Bill Clinton and remains a vocal conservation advocate. “It is the premier forest research entity in the world, on everything from invasive species to wildland fire risk, watershed protection, basic silviculture and harvest methods.”

The Forest Service’s revamp also will relocate the agency’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and restructure its regional management system.

The Forest Service did not grant a Stateline interview request. The agency has not said how much money it expects to save by closing the research stations.

Many Western leaders are skeptical that the consolidated operation will be able to replicate the work of the existing research stations. State officials said they’ve been given few details about how the transition will play out and whether existing research will continue.

In Washington state, the Forest Service plans to close research stations in Seattle and Wenatchee, while maintaining a facility in Olympia.

“The station in Seattle does some of the most practical-based research that we use for fire and forest management,” said Washington State Forester George Geissler. “We don’t want to lose that work. They’ve said they’ll keep Olympia open, but we don’t know what that looks like. Are they making sure we don’t lose the ongoing research?”

Forestry veterans say it’s important for the agency to continue its scientific work across a wide variety of forests and climates.

“This is research that’s been going on for decades or even a century or more,” said Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit that advocates for agency workers. “They’re able to see how climate change impacts are playing out in a dry ponderosa forest or a humid hardwood forest. There are research plots and experimental forests that have been diligently studied for decades. This could be a loss of a lot of knowledge.”

The Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, for instance, plays a crucial role in issuing wildfire smoke forecasts that are relied on throughout the Northwest. After a hot, dry winter, that work could be critical as a dangerous wildfire season approaches.

In Vermont, the Burlington research station slated for closure studied maple syrup production and the effects of acid rain on different tree species, according to VTDigger.

And in Mississippi, the Southern Institute of Forest Genetics, also on the chopping block, has guided tree improvement programs that improved growth and pest resistance in Southern timber forests.

Some conservation advocates are concerned that the research station closures are aimed at suppressing studies that might show the environmental harms of logging or mining. President Donald Trump has pledged to increase timber production on federal lands. He has moved to limit environmental reviews and protections for endangered species to speed up logging projects.

In an interview with the Deseret News, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said that the move was designed to ensure that the Forest Service’s research “will better align with the priorities of the administration” — minerals, recreation, fire management and “active management” of forests, which can include timber harvests and thinning projects. He said the research would support not just forests but also private landowners.

“It’s not streamlining, it’s dismantling,” said Chandra Rosenthal, Western lands and Rocky Mountain advocate with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that defends whistleblowers in the federal service. “It’s going to really impact how the Forest Service makes decisions on the ground. The way the Trump administration is trying to make a lot of decisions is gut feelings.”

In a webpage set up to respond to news coverage of the move, the Forest Service said it is a “myth” that the station closures will eliminate scientific positions or cancel research programs. But many forestry veterans said that attrition is inevitable, as researchers are asked to move their families across the country to work under a new model with few details.

“There’s concern that we’re going to see a lot of really good individuals who cannot uproot their families that we’ll lose,” said Geissler, the Washington state forester. “It’s taken a long time to develop that kind of expertise. It’s scary.”

Foresters in both conservative and liberal states said they rely heavily on the research the Forest Service provides. Most were unwilling to comment extensively about the closures without seeing more details.

“That work is absolutely important, and I sure hope it continues,” said Wyoming State Forester Kelly Norris. “I don’t think research should stop. It may need to look a little different.”

Some leaders said there may be opportunities for states, through forestry agencies and universities, to pick up the slack and ensure research continues, even if the Forest Service is no longer playing a lead role.

“This is still a little bit of an unknown area, but we’ll have to make sure that if there’s a gap there, that we’re working with our universities and (state) research centers to make sure that is still being provided,” said Utah State Forester Jamie Barnes.

Nick Smith, public affairs director with the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, expressed support for the agency’s effort to consolidate its work, saying he’d had “limited interaction” with the research stations.

While some of the Forest Service’s work is controversial, agency veterans say its research program is valued by loggers and tree-huggers alike.

“Nobody was asking for this,” said Robert Bonnie, who served as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment during the Obama administration. “There was no call to do anything like this.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org. 

Congress’ move to allow mining in a national forest near a wilderness area may have broad ramifications across the country.

The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to overturn a mining ban in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

By using an obscure tool known as the Congressional Review Act to open the national forest for mining, lawmakers have called into question the validity of every management plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service over the past several decades. That could result in legal chaos for thousands of permits covering logging, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation. 

Over the past year, Congress for the first time has used the Congressional Review Act to revoke management plans for regions managed by the Bureau of Land Management, seeking to allow more mining and drilling. Such plans had not previously been considered “rules” subject to lawmakers’ review. 

Under the act, federal agencies must submit new regulations to Congress before they can take effect. Because management plans, which function as high-level guidance documents, were never considered rules, federal agencies did not submit them to Congress for review. 

Using a new legal theory, Republicans in Congress have opened reviews and revoked several specific plans that limited resource extraction in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. But those actions call into question whether more than 100 other such plans are legally in effect, since they are now considered rules that were not sent to Congress as the law requires.

Public lands experts say the new interpretation could create legal jeopardy across hundreds of millions of acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management, threatening any permit issued under a management plan drafted after the passage of the Congressional Review Act in 1996.

Now, for the first time, Congress has used the review tool to overturn a management decision on Forest Service land. 

“There’s a huge playing field of actions that would be forbidden if none of these management plans are lawfully in place,” Robert Anderson, who served as solicitor for the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration, told Stateline earlier this year. “This could bring things to a screeching halt.”

Longtime outdoors writer Wes Siler, who has written extensively about the Boundary Waters review battle, said in a post Thursday that the vote will “destroy the Forest Service’s ability to conduct regular business for the foreseeable future.” If the agency’s management plans suddenly become invalid, he wrote, “not only could this grind industrial operations on (Forest Service) land to a halt as all of this winds its way through federal court, but it could also set (the Forest Service) the task of re-doing 30 years of work.”

On Thursday, the Senate voted 50-49 to revoke a Biden-era plan that banned mining on land in the Superior National Forest. The resolution will now go to President Donald Trump for his signature.

A Chilean mining company has proposed to mine for copper, nickel and cobalt along Birch Lake in Minnesota. The planned mine would sit at the headwaters of the wilderness area’s watershed. The Boundary Waters is the most popular wilderness in the country, and advocates say the water is so pristine that many visitors fill their bottles straight from the surface of its lakes.

Wilderness proponents say such mines have a long track record of pollution, and leaks from the proposed site would flow downstream and irreversibly contaminate the treasured Boundary Waters.

U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, the Minnesota Republican who sponsored the review action, has said the mine would bring jobs to the region. Opponents have argued that the tourism economy centered on the Boundary Waters is a larger economic driver, and noted that the mine will be run by a foreign company that will likely export the copper to China. 

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, led the effort to uphold the mining ban on the Senate floor. Following the vote, she said that supporters of the Boundary Waters would likely mount a legal challenge, questioning the use of the Congressional Review Act to revoke a public land order from the Forest Service. 

“I question the legality of what Congress did,” Smith said, according to the Minnesota Reformer.  

Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also voted against the measure. Tillus also questioned the use of the Congressional Review Act.

“It’s a precedent that I think our Republican colleagues are going to regret,” he told The Minnesota Star Tribune. 

The Forest Service oversees nearly 200 million acres of land, managed for multiple uses, including timber harvests, grazing, outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat. Some legal experts fear the management plans governing those activities are now in legal jeopardy. 

“That right there is chaos,” Peter Van Tuyn, a longtime environmental lawyer and managing partner at Bessenyey & Van Tuyn LLC, told Stateline earlier this year. 

“Those (plans) go across the full spectrum of what land managers do: conservation and preservation, mining approvals, oil and gas drilling, resource exploitation, public access and recreation,” he added. “There’s a very real chance that a court could say that a resource management plan was never in effect and all the implementation actions under the umbrella of that plan are invalid.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org. 

A sweeping reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service signals that the agency is planning to lean heavily on states to help manage millions of acres of federal land, foresters across the West say.

State officials and timber industry leaders say they’ve been given scant details about the plan, which will move the agency’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, restructure its regional management, and close scores of research stations in dozens of states.

While they wait for the dust to settle, they’re preparing for the Forest Service — with its workforce slashed by the Trump administration — to ask more of its partners under the new model.

“The Forest Service itself is unable to uphold its mission and cannot alone manage the many challenges on these landscapes,” said Nick Smith, public affairs director with the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group. “The transition from regional offices to more state-level offices is a recognition that partnerships are the future for the Forest Service.”

But many forestry veterans fear the shake-up will cause more attrition in an agency that’s already shrunk because of Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce. Some see a clear sign that moving the headquarters to Utah — a state whose leaders are often hostile to federal land ownership — is designed to undermine the Forest Service’s management of its lands.

The closure of 57 research stations, some agency partners fear, will threaten critical science that states and other forest managers rely on to learn about wildfire behavior, timber production and a host of other issues.

Some observers noted that the agency is required to seek congressional approval to relocate offices, which could trigger legal challenges to the plan if lawmakers do not weigh in.

Meanwhile, some foresters feel the uncertainty swirling over the agency will cause chaos as the West heads into a dangerous fire season amid record temperatures and drought.

The plan announced on March 31 will relocate Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz and his headquarters staff to Salt Lake City. The agency will close its nine regional offices, each of which oversee national forests across multiple states. Replacing those offices will be 15 state directors, mostly in Western states.

Many state leaders, from both conservative and liberal states, say they welcome the opportunity to deepen their partnerships with the Forest Service and play a greater role on federal lands. But they’re still anxious to see more details about the agency’s new structure and concerned that national forests remain deeply understaffed.

“There are definitely a lot of vacancies in key positions that need to be filled,” said Jon Songster, federal lands bureau chief with the Idaho Department of Lands. “I hope that a lot of that remaining expertise is not lost, but shifted to the forest level where it’s desperately needed. Hopefully with all these changes there will be opportunities to put more people in some of those key gaps.”

Scarce details

The Forest Service manages nearly 200 million acres of land, mostly in Western states. With a mandate to manage the land for multiple uses, the agency oversees timber harvests, livestock grazing, outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat.

Under President Donald Trump, the Forest Service has lost about 16% of its workforce — nearly 5,900 employees — through buyouts, layoffs and early retirements. Trump’s proposed budget for 2027 would cut billions of dollars from the agency’s funding.

Many observers view the reorganization plan as an effort to force out more longtime agency leaders. The moves are expected to affect about 5,000 employees across the various offices that are relocating.

“If this were a stand-alone proposal where the American public and the public agency employees had trust in the administration, a lot of it makes sense,” said Mike Dombeck, who served as chief of the Forest Service under President Bill Clinton and remains a vocal conservation advocate. “But the level of trust is at rock bottom.”

In its announcement, the agency said that the new state-based model will bring decision-making closer to the forest level and reduce bureaucracy. The Forest Service did not grant a Stateline interview request.

State foresters, who are responsible for managing the forests in their states, say they’ve been given few details other than the new office maps released by the agency. They don’t know when the transitions will happen, which officials will be staffing the new offices or what authority they will have.

“They’ve made the statement that they need to rely more on states,” said Washington State Forester George Geissler. “If you’re going to lean on us, it might help us to know what that means.”

States’ role

In recent years, the Forest Service has increasingly partnered with states, tribes, counties and nonprofits to carry out projects on federal lands. Foresters say agreements such as the Good Neighbor Authority have become a critical tool, allowing more work to happen in national forests even as the feds’ own capacity shrinks.

“We’ve seen some of that institutional knowledge (at the Forest Service) dwindle a little bit,” said Utah State Forester Jamie Barnes. “Building these partnerships, if you do see a decline on one side or the other, you can bridge that loss. We’re working together, making joint decisions so we can get timber off the landscape here in Utah.”

Some foresters said they welcome the chance to work more closely with the Forest Service, but they’re concerned that the agency has not recovered from Trump’s workforce cuts. Reassigning hundreds of employees to new locations could lead to more attrition.

In Wyoming, state officials are excited to have Forest Service leaders working in close proximity. But State Forester Kelly Norris acknowledged that the move could be “bumpy,” given the lack of details and ongoing workforce shortages in the agency.

“The logistics of this may be a lot harder implemented than said,” she said. “We see this as a positive for us, but I do think that this is going to be a real long transition.”

Idaho, Utah and Wyoming are among the Western states that share the Trump administration’s goal of increasing timber production on federal lands. Trump has moved to limit environmental reviews and protections for endangered species to speed up logging projects.

Some Forest Service veterans feel the move to increase states’ role will prove destructive in some parts of the West.

“We’re putting the governance of the forests more subject to states’ interests,” said Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit that advocates for civil employees. “I would be concerned that the values that don’t have strong lobbying groups, such as watershed integrity, may be subjugated to extractive values like timber, mining and grazing.”

Several agency veterans stressed that the Forest Service’s state directors should be career professionals, not political appointees.

HQ move

By relocating its headquarters to Salt Lake City, the Forest Service said in its announcement, the agency is moving leaders closer to the forests they manage.

But some are skeptical the move will bring stronger management to the West. During Trump’s first term, he moved the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. Only 41 of the 328 employees subject to the transition actually relocated.

“Shaking things up is going to get people to abandon their positions, and that’s the intent,” said Chandra Rosenthal, Western lands and Rocky Mountain advocate with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that defends whistleblowers in the federal service. “It’s a long-term dismantling of the scientific backbone and staff. The theory is that the federal government will abandon a lot of the public lands and then states will be forced to fill in those gaps.”

Rosenthal and others noted that Utah’s political leaders are hostile to federal land ownership. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, led an effort last year to sell off millions of acres of federal land, which drew widespread backlash before it was withdrawn. Utah’s state government has also sued the federal government, seeking to claim control of 18.5 million acres of federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

“Why would you move the headquarters of a public lands management agency to the state that is the most anti-public lands in the country?” said Dombeck, the former Forest Service chief.

Dombeck also noted that the Forest Service chief frequently reports to the White House, testifies in congressional hearings and coordinates national policy with other agency leaders. Moving the position out of D.C., he said, makes little sense.

In a webpage set up to respond to news coverage of the move, the Forest Service said it is a “myth” that the transition is designed to reduce its workforce or transfer federal lands to the states.

But some agency veterans are skeptical.

“It’s hard not to reach the conclusion that this is an effort to weaken federal agencies and federal management of these lands,” said Robert Bonnie, who served as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment during the Obama administration. “You’re going to lose some good staff as part of the reorganization, as they move chairs across the deck of the Titanic.”

Meanwhile, some state leaders are concerned that the uncertainty caused by the reorganization and Trump’s staffing cuts could lead to chaos as wildfire season approaches. With record temperatures and drought drying out much of the West, foresters expect a challenging fire season this summer. The Forest Service remains the nation’s largest wildland firefighting agency, even as the Trump administration seeks to consolidate wildland fire operations into a separate service under the U.S. Department of the Interior.

“I’ve got federal firefighters, fire managers, and all they’re talking about is what’s happening at (the Forest Service),” said Geissler, the Washington state forester. “I don’t feel like having a bunch of distracted firefighters on my hands going into a summer fire season.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.