A Republican-controlled Senate committee voted last week to advance the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act, a bill that would expedite logging in national forests by limiting environmental reviews and lawsuits. While lumber-heavy industries and business trade associations praise the move as a step toward preventing wildfires, environmentalists call it a corporate giveaway that would throw open millions of acres of land to logging.
With the socioeconomic costs of forest fires on the rise globally, and with the Western U.S. particularly affected, federal policymakers have faced increased pressure in recent years to develop solutions to help save properties and lives. The bill would create categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) exempting certain wildfire prevention activities from federal environmental reviews. The exclusions would cover projects like removing hazard trees near power lines and thinning forests to reduce fuel loads, with allowances for areas of up to 6,000 acres near roads and trails and up to 10,000 acres in high-risk firesheds. While the law explicitly bars using these authorities “for the sole purpose of timber production,” opponents like Earthjustice and Sierra Club say the definition of “fuels management” is broad enough to allow for clear-cut commercial logging of mature trees.
It also establishes long-term stewardship contracts of up to 20 years, giving companies extended authority to conduct mechanical thinning, forest mastication, grazing, and other vegetation management practices across high-risk areas. Projects must include a “strategy for maximizing the retention of late-successional forests,” but this is only a planning requirement and not a binding limit on the logging of old-growth trees.
While much of the bill focuses on logging, it also includes a prescribed fire title (co-authored by Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Alex Padilla) that would fund cross-boundary burns and training for prescribed fire practitioners. On Oct. 21, 2025, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry approved the bill by an 18-5 bipartisan margin, sending it to the full Senate for consideration. The primary sponsor, Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), says the bill “will deliver essential tools to combat wildfires, restore forest ecosystems, and make federal forest management more efficient and responsive.”
