Green Lawfare Is Fueling America’s Wildfires

More than 45,000 wildfires have burned more than 5.5 million acres of the United States so far this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some 86 large fires are burning right now. The country has been at Preparedness Level 5, the top of the scale, since mid-July, and massive multi-battalion fire crews from other countries are even flying in to help us combat our seemingly endless fire emergency.

But it never had to get this bad. And despite what the left-wing environmentalists say, the culprit isn’t “climate change” – it’s their own destructive lawfare that’s preventing responsible forest management.

A wildfire needs three things: Dry weather, a spark, and something to burn.

Congress can’t legislate drought out of existence, nor can it stop lightning strikes. That leaves the fuel – the one part of this equation forest managers can actually control to an extent. But for 30 years, a permanent litigation industry of radical “green” activists has used federal environmental law to keep anyone from properly clearing out the piles of deadwood that turn manageable fires (which are part of the natural forest cycle) into out-of-control infernos.

That obstruction is often accomplished through the National Environmental Policy Act, better known as NEPA. Before the Forest Service can thin a stand of trees or remove fuel, it is required to assemble a team of foresters, biologists, hydrologists, and archaeologists to conduct field surveys and computer modeling, evaluate effects on wildlife and watersheds, develop alternative plans, and solicit public comment.

Only after that work is completed can the agency approve a fuel-clearing project. This is required whether the proposal is for thinning out 50 acres or one million acres. Overcoming these hurdles can consume several years, giving activist groups repeated opportunities to file objections and lawsuits while more fuel accumulates on the forest floor. As Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz recently explained to local media, “There are folks that, I would argue, in some cases have used the processes to thwart projects.”

“Thwart” is a polite word for the radical environmentalist lawfare that is leaving America’s forests primed to explode.

Environmental litigants have currently tied up over one billion board feet of timber slated for removal, even as vast swaths of the nation burn. Their lawsuits routinely target timber sales, forest-thinning projects, prescribed burns, and other vegetation treatments intended to keep overgrown federal lands from becoming tinderboxes.

Across much of the West, forest vegetation is twice as dense as it was historically. In the Sierra Nevada, forest lands are five and six times thicker than normal. Schultz said a healthy forest grows five to seven percent a year, but across the nearly 200 million acres of federal forest land in America, more wood is now dying than growing.

In Canada, things are even worse – and a terrifying preview of what’s to come in the United States without a course correction. As usual, Canada is just a few years further down the crazy rabbit hole than us, as President Donald Trump correctly pointed out earlier this month.

Wildfires from British Columbia to Ontario have choked Midwest and Eastern Seaboard cities with thick smoke. Amid this rapidly escalating disaster, one would expect contrite and repentant environmentalists to apologize for their obstructionist lawsuits preventing forest management. But no, the sky turns orange, and within hours we are told that “climate change” is to blame, and therefore we must restructure the whole economy.

A recent comment from Democratic-Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is indicative of this dishonest schtick. “Climate change is fueling more wildfires, heat waves, floods, and other extreme weather,” he posted on X before then pointing the finger at “Big Oil.” It is a well-crafted self-sealing argument: fossil fuels cause climate change, climate change causes wildfires, and every wildfire therefore becomes another indictment of fossil fuels.

But this bad-faith argument is a smoke screen that hides the left’s culpability for the lawsuits that keep millions of acres of forests overcrowded and combustible.

Meanwhile, real pain is being inflicted on Americans.

In Oregon, a single night of dry thunderstorms threw thousands of lightning strikes into the woods, and the state has now passed one million acres burned. In Colorado, the Aspen Acres Fire came over a hillside above Beulah and took out 850 buildings. It ranks as the seventh largest fire in that state’s history. On the Colorado and Utah border in June, three wildland firefighters were killed.

This past May, University of California, Davis researchers published hard numbers in Science. Studying 285 Western wildfires, they found that where crews had done the work beforehand, forest management projects prevented roughly sixty premature deaths, avoided $2.8 billion in damage, and returned $3.73 for every dollar spent.

The Trump administration is trying to speed up the NEPA process to haul out dangerous woodpiles in other potential fire hotspots. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins ordered agency officials to expedite environmental assessments of forest management proposals. She asked that all evaluations be completed within 12 months for smaller projects, and within two years for larger ones. But the incessant liberal lawsuits still pose a major problem.

One partial solution to the lawsuits is the Fix Our Forests Act, introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR). This bill will speed up forest-thinning projects in high-risk firesheds by sharply limiting the litigation window from six years to 150 days. It forces plaintiffs to participate in the public comment period of the review and requires substantial evidence of environmental harm before a court can block a project.

In other words, the risk of letting a forest burn would finally matter alongside the activists’ demand to leave it untouched.

Predictably, roughly 150 environmental organizations lined up against the legislation. Their opposition letter devoted pages to defending the regulatory and litigation machinery that keeps forest projects trapped in review, yet offered no comparable plan for removing hazardous fuel at the speed and scale this crisis demands. They remain remarkably specific about every tree that must not be touched and remarkably vague about who will answer when the entire forest burns.

The House passed its version of the bill by an overwhelming 279–141 vote in January 2025. The Senate Agriculture Committee advanced a revised bill 18–5 last October. Then Congress stopped moving. The legislation has remained parked on the Senate calendar ever since, awaiting a floor vote as more than four million acres have burned this year and fire season is far from over.

Once again, the flames are moving faster than Congress.

America has trained foresters, prescribed fire experience, modern mapping, heavy equipment, and decades of science showing us where the greatest dangers lie. We aren’t helpless, but our leaders currently lack the political will to solve the problem.

Radical environmental groups in our body politic aren’t going away anytime soon, but a lethargic Congress allowing bipartisan reform to gather dust is unacceptable. Every month the Senate delays, more fuel accumulates and the next spark moves closer to another American town.

The choice is simple. We either manage our forests on our terms today or wait for nature’s devastating wildfires to clear out the deadwood for us tomorrow. It’s past time for Congress to act.