August 12, 2026 HFHC News Round Up
U.S. Forest Service consolidates national fire and aviation authorities under its Deputy Chief for Fire and Aviation Management (Sierra Sun)
The U.S. Forest Service today announced an alignment of national wildfire management authorities that strengthens operational efficiency and clarifies reporting roles across the agency. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz delivered the formal delegation of authority letter today, consolidating all fire and aviation authorities under the agency’s Deputy Chief of Fire and Aviation Management, Safety, and Employee Wellbeing, a position currently held by Sarah Fisher. The delegation is effective immediately and implements Executive Order 14308 and Secretary Memorandum 1078-017. Under the delegation, all fire and aviation authorities outlined in Forest Service Manual 1230 (Delegations of Authority) and 5100 (Fire Management) are reassigned to the deputy chief, except where a specific delegation restricts the exercise of certain powers reserved to the chief. The action establishes distinct lines of authority and reduces administrative layers to support more efficient delivery of national wildfire response and aviation operations.
Federal officials tour Idaho fire sites following significant Western wildfire activity (KTVB)
Federal officials responsible for managing national lands and forests visited Idaho on Tuesday, with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum joining members of the state’s congressional delegation in touring the Foothills lands burned by the Claremont Fire. Rep. Mike Simpson said he toured the Claremont Fire area and met with Boise National Forest leaders while joining colleagues in welcoming the two Cabinet secretaries. The Claremont Fire, first reported July 6, burned 6,606 acres before reaching 100% containment Aug. 3 after weeks of suppression efforts involving ground crews and aircraft.
Oregon firefighters have half the resources they need to battle blazes, says Wyden (Bend Bulletin)
Wyden specifically called out the Trump administration’s federal Wildland Fire Service, calling it a “slapdash operation” and a distraction from the immediate needs of firefighters. The Fire Service, established in January, unifies multiple agencies — the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and other agencies — to streamline efforts to wildfire response. Trump’s Executive Order 14308, which created the Service, cites the January 2025 Los Angeles Fires as the call to action…Wyden said he plans to use what he has learned from firefighters and local officials to push for additional resources and a stronger emphasis on prevention when Congress returns. He said the traditional concept of a defined fire season has disappeared. “Fire does not take a break anymore,” Wyden said. “Now the fire season is virtually year-round.” He said that makes long-term investments in forest management, prescribed burning and fuels reduction increasingly important. “We’re taking a more aggressive approach today,” Wyden said. “We’ve got tough times in the fall. It’s still going to be fire season when the Congress comes back.”
Northwest region loses 8% of air quality gains due to wildfire smoke alone, new study finds (NBC Yakima)
A new study finds that wildfire smoke substantially cut air quality gains nationwide, disproportionately effecting low-income, rural, and indigenous communities. The study, titled “Wildfire contributions to prenatal PM2.5 exposure in the contiguous United States, 2003–2019,” was published earlier in August in Frontiers in Environmental Health. Researchers reviewed how many days pregnant women lived with poor air quality across more than 2800 counties, examining 64.5 million birth certificate records from 2003 to 2019. The study found that air pollution rates declined overall within that time period, largely due to policy changes, but worsening wildfire smoke offset many of those improvements.
Wildfire smoke spurs respiratory health concerns in Northwest Montana (Daily Inter Lake)
Air quality in Northwest Montana dipped to very unhealthy levels last week due to wildfire smoke, bringing those with chronic respiratory conditions into local doctor’s offices. Dr. Timothy Nuce, medical director with Greater Valley Health Center, said he’s seen multiple patients struggling with the poor air condition. “Most commonly, they are seen and treated for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, and asthma exacerbations,” Nuce explained. Smoke from wildfires in Oregon and Washington continued to sit over western Montana on Tuesday, prompting the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to issue an air quality alert for all of Northwest Montana through Wednesday morning, when conditions are expected to improve.
Zooming In: Sheehy’s Draft Letter on Emergency Administrative Relief (The Smokey Wire)
Senator Sheehy trying to get support for an emergency implementation of administrative streamlining due to this year’s wildfire season. Their office is apparently trying to get other Congressfolk to sign on. The idea is apparently to get enough Congressfolk to sign on to ask the Prez to do a 90-day emergency EO to give some administrative relief to some bureaucratic hurdles. Then there’s the fact that it’s only August, and firefighters often battle fires into September.
Utah’s intense, dangerous fire season could be its most expensive (Utah News Dispatch)
Utah has burned through an estimated $33 million to fight raging wildfires this year, putting the state on track to outspend last year’s record total. Inflation is partly to blame. But the rising cost also reflects the sheer size of this year’s fires, their encroachment on communities and the intense heat, drought and wind making them more resistant to containment, said Wade Snyder, deputy state fire management officer with the Division of Forestry, Fire & State Lands. “We’re not out of the woods yet,” Snyder said Monday. He said the estimated $33 million spent so far may grow by another third. He also cautioned that the numbers are preliminary and the exact costs won’t be sorted out for some time.
Timber Fire is ‘everyone’s worst nightmare’ as it threatens communities, iconic Big Sur landmarks (ABC7)
The ‘Timber Fire’ continued burning in the Big Sur National Forest area Tuesday, scorching more than 2,400 acres as firefighters battled difficult terrain, limited access and smoky conditions while communities along Highway 1 remained under evacuation warnings and orders. Fire officials said more than 300 firefighters were working the blaze. An aggressive air attack targeted steep ridges throughout the day as flames and smoke moved closer to homes.
As blazes rage across Oregon, Mosier explores a proactive approach to fire (OPB)
Mosier small business owner Drew Merritt and his wife, Kristin Currin, came terrifyingly close to a wildfire in 2020. The raging Mosier Creek Fire crept within 300 yards of their property as they raced home from a camping trip. “We could see it moving up the canyon and trees torching,” Merritt said. “It was definitely panic inducing at that point because it was looking pretty threatening, but we were extremely fortunate with that fire.” Now six years later, Merritt is working to make sure they never feel that feeling again. Earlier this summer, he attended an informational meeting alongside more than 30 other Mosier residents to discuss forming a Prescribed Burn Association in their town. These informal, community-based groups practice a wildfire defense that’s been used for millennia by Indigenous peoples: setting fires proactively and in controlled conditions to reduce the risk of out-of-control firestorms later.
Heinrich Leads Letter Opposing Interior’s Wilderness Policy Review, Another Ploy by the Trump Administration to Weaken Public Lands Protections (Heinrich Press)
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led nine colleagues in sending a letter to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum strongly opposing Interior’s wilderness management policy review, which may threaten the wilderness character of public lands and disqualify them for future designation by Congress — undermining Congress’ role in wilderness management, and placing nearly 200 million acres of public land at risk.
The Park Service is removing trees downed by Helene. Conservationists are asking them to stop. (BPR)
The National Park Service is beginning this month to haul downed trees out of the forest lands adjacent to the Blue Ridge Parkway. But a new petition circulating online asks the National Park Service to stop the work out of concern for the impact of the aerial spraying and heavy machinery employed in the process. “Driving through, you might spot a bobcat – not the kind you’d hope to see on a family vacation, but the kind with a diesel engine,” reads the petition, which currently has 1,377 signatures. According to the National Park Service, the process is intended to reduce fire risk by removing logs and other vegetation that is drying out and reducing the safety of the area for staff and visitors; The Parkway is beginning this work in August or September, and aims to complete it by spring 2027.
Groups to sue Lolo Forest over shrinking grizzly habitat (Missoula Current)
Four organizations are preparing to challenge a logging project near Seeley Lake, saying the Forest Service is once again trying to claim that slivers of land can provide secure habitat for grizzly bears. On Friday, Kristine Akland, Center for Biological Diversity Northern Rockies director, sent a letter on half of four organizations informing the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they have 60 days to re-evaluate their biological opinions related to the North Seeley Wildland Urban Interface – Highway 83 logging project.
Bellingham’s largest encampment vacated as clearing, timber harvest set to begin (Bellingham Herald)
The estimated 200 individuals living in Bellingham’s “largest, most entrenched encampment” were required to vacate by Monday after formal notices of trespass were provided Aug. 3, according to Deputy City Administrator Jancie Keller. Cleanup, timber harvest and environmental restoration are now expected to begin on the impacted properties.
Editorial: All of WA must better prepare for megafire (Seattle Times)
The soupy, toxic fog that hung over Seattle and the Puget Sound region last week was a constant reminder of the wildfires raging across Eastern Washington. It can feel insufferable and inevitable — that the fires will burn, increasingly in every corner of the state, as the years become hotter and drier. But rather than resigning ourselves to this fate, the smoky skies should reinforce a call to action, for every Washingtonian. The wildfires that consumed neighborhoods in Spokane and enveloped forests in Chelan and elsewhere have a kind of performance-enhancing drug feeding their flames: climate change. As a society, we can choose to deny this reality, but it does little good to do so. The forecast each year will continue to be tinderbox-like conditions. We must do all we can to prepare for it.
U.S. Lumber Coalition: Trump Administration Holds Key to Addressing Canada’s Market-Disrupting Structural Excess Capacity in Lumber (PR Newswire)
Statistics Canada has confirmed that Canada’s softwood lumber market diversification ‘program’ is failing to yield results, despite Canada’s fanfare of public statements and travel by provincial officials. The agency reports that Canadian lumber shipments to non-U.S. markets have declined once again over the last six months, confirming that Canadian producers remain more dependent than ever on unloading and dumping their multibillion board feet of excess lumber capacity into the United States. Canada’s structural excess lumber capacity remains a huge burden on U.S. manufacturers and workers hit by Canada’s unfair trade practices and as such must be dismantled through the Administration’s strong America First trade policies. The continuation of strong antidumping and countervailing duty enforcement coupled with President Trump’s highly effective Section 232 tariff measures is the answer.
Federal report says firefighting tactics at Maine lumber mill explosion aided the blast (WBOC)
Firefighters who responded to a fire at a Maine lumber mill used tactics that inadvertently contributed to a massive explosion that killed three people, according to a report from federal investigators. The fire companies tried to extinguish the May 15 fire inside a silo at the Robbins Lumber mill in rural Searsmont, Maine, by injecting it with water — unaware of warnings from the manufacturer that doing so would be dangerous. The silo then blasted skyward like a rocket as flames and a shock wave from the explosion hurled workers and firefighters away. The firefighters didn’t know, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health wrote this month, that the silo was oxygen-limiting, a type of sealed structure that can become pressurized with combustible gases during a fire.
US Builder Stacks Modular Homes Atop Timber Instead of Concrete (Wood Central)
Ninety apartments are being placed on a reinforced cross-laminated timber podium in Los Altos, California, a structure the contractor claims is an American first. That is according to Welton Jordan, chief real estate development officer at EAH Housing, the nonprofit behind the project, who confirmed that 330 Distel Circle will finish in October, months ahead of schedule, and open to residents from the start of 2027.
National Hardwood Lumber Association Ends Lobbying Relationship (Legis1)
The National Hardwood Lumber Association ended its relationship with Capitol Resources LLC, according to a termination filing submitted on Aug. 7.The move came after the Mississippi-based firm represented the industry group on tax and trade issues throughout 2025 and into 2026.
The U.S. Forest Service needs ornaments for the Capitol Christmas Tree (Boise State Public Radio)
Store shelves are lined with school supplies this time of year, and some already have Halloween decorations. But Forest Service workers in Idaho are thinking about Christmas. The People’s Tree – the towering evergreen that stands in Capitol Square to represent the people of the United States – will be harvested from Northern Idaho this year. But the U.S. Forest Service needs thousands of ornaments to decorate it. “All of the ornaments that go to the tree are handmade from people in our communities,” said Kayti Bauer, a recreation management specialist for the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. She’s been unboxing some of the latest designs people have been sending in.
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