Forestry Smart Policy
That's Wild: The High Cost of Gridlock in Federal Forest Management
What happens when years of collaborative forest restoration work get tied up in litigation — and wildfire gets there first? OFIC President Chris Edwards sits down with Travis Joseph, president and CEO of the American Forest Resource Council (AFRC), for a candid conversation about Oregon’s historic 2026 wildfire season, the Grasshopper Fire on the Mount Hood National Forest, and the challenges facing federal forest management across the West. At the center of the conversation is the Grasshopper Restoration Project, a collaboratively developed fuels treatment and forest restoration project on the Mount Hood National Forest. After four years of work where the collaborative got to consensus on treatment, Oregon Wild sued the U.S. Forest Service over the project, contributing to delays that prevented the planned treatments from being completed before the Grasshopper Fire burned through the area. Chris and Travis explore what the case says about active forest management, wildfire prevention, environmental litigation, NEPA and federal forest policy — and tackle bigger questions about climate change, forest health, conservation, the political influence of anti-forestry activist groups and whether decades-old policies are still producing the environmental outcomes Americans want. It’s a frank discussion about wildfire, public lands, collaboration and what it may take to rethink forest management in Oregon and across the West.
