Stop post-fire logging in Sawtooth National Recreation Area
Wapiti Post-Fire Recovery Project
U.S. Forest Service· Sawtooth National Recreation AreaU.S. Forest Service project page ↗
Forest ServiceWe track this on the agency’s own system of record, where most on-the-ground decisions live.
The groups on this fight
4 groups work Idaho
By footprint, from the same match the STAND matchmaker runs; none is linked to this decision in our record yet. Give straight to them; nothing routes through us.
- Advocates for the West
Works Idaho: represented Western Watersheds Project in the Jarbidge grazing litigation, winning 2004 and 2005 NEPA rulings, a 2009 injunction that grazing-as-usual must end, and a 2011 order closing 17 allotments across the 625,000-acre resource area..
- Center for Biological Diversity
Works Idaho: plaintiff and co-counsel in the February 2025 lawsuit arguing federal wildlife agencies violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to protect salmon, steelhead, bull trout, and wolverine from the mine..
- Idaho Conservation League
Works Idaho: mobilized Idahoans to file Interior Department comments defending Craters of the Moon during the 2017 national monument review, arguing shrinkage would damage the economies of Blaine, Butte, Minidoka, and Power counties..
- Western Watersheds Project
Works Idaho: has litigated BLM grazing mismanagement across 1.4 million acres of the Jarbidge and Bruneau river canyonlands since the early 2000s, winning injunctions against permit overruns and Ninth Circuit-affirmed orders requiring allotment assessments and stream protections..
Every group above is on STAND for Public Lands, with its court record, its filings and who backs it.
The Forest Service wants to log and clear vegetation across the 2024 Wapiti Fire burn area in Sawtooth.
What’s at risk
Burned forest in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area faces timber harvest and fuels removal before natural recovery can occur. Post-fire landscapes often regenerate on their own, and early intervention can remove the snags and downed wood that wildlife and soil depend on.
If this goes through
If approved, the project would authorize commercial timber harvest and hazardous fuels reduction inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, removing burned material that would otherwise support post-fire ecological recovery.
Our plain-English read of the official notice ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words below.
4 holes in the agency’s own analysis
What the public could have raised, from the agency’s own document
- I oppose this action as proposed, and I ask the agency to weigh the specific harms below.
- The Wapiti Post-Fire Recovery Project proposes timber harvest in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, a protected landscape where logging should be scrutinized carefully before approval.
- Hazardous fuels reduction and road work in the 2024 Wapiti Fire area can disturb recovering soils and vegetation before natural regeneration has had a chance to establish.
- The Forest Service should demonstrate that proposed timber harvest in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area serves genuine ecological recovery rather than commercial extraction.
- Road work proposed under this project risks causing erosion and long-term habitat fragmentation in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area post-fire landscape.
Show all 6 points from the document
- Say something only you can say. The law requires the agency to consider and respond to substantive comments, and specifics are what make a comment substantive.
In the agency’s own words
The Sawtooth National Recreation Area is proposing hazardous fuels reduction, timber harvest, and essential road work to support post‑fire recovery in the 2024 Wapiti Fire area, improving safety and restoring forest conditions.
The reporting behind this
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