News from the Shawnee National Forest

Several weeks ago I posted a piece on environmentalists who have long worked to protect the Shawnee National Forest, one of the most beautiful and diverse natural areas in the country.

Sam Stearns, caretaker of a 500-acre Illinois Audubon Society property in southeastern Illinois, and founder of the Friends of Bell Smith Springs (FOBSS), a National Natural Landmark in the Shawnee, walked me around his biome in February and explained how, 30 years earlier, the US Forest Service intended to clear-cut 3,400 acres there.

Timber is often sold to private contractors by the Forest Service, which falls under the Department of Agriculture, at a loss after subsidies, federal road building into logging plots, and administration costs. Many of the trees are chipped and used for nothing more than disposable livestock bedding.

Thirty years ago, a General Accounting Office report showed that “the federal timber program lost nearly $1 billion between 1992 and 1994. The President’s Council of Economic Advisers found that the Forest Service lost an additional $234 million in 1995.”

After public protest at the Bell Smith Springs plan, young attorney Tom Buchele and RACE (the Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists) were able to get a temporary restraining order against the Forest Service and private loggers. This led to a federal court order, in 1999, that stopped logging around Bell Smith Springs for 17 years.

It has taken a few more years, after the expiration of the order, for the logging to start up again, but the Forest Service has again marked 70 acres of trees to be cut in the steep hills of the Shawnee Forest.

Sam Stearns says, in a news release from FOBSS, “They have already punched in a logging road and created a large open area for a log landing. This has been done under the guise of a Categorical Exclusion, which allows the Forest Service to log up to 70 acres without first doing an environmental analysis of the area. They intend to decimate the same public land, one 70-acre bite at a time. And we intend, once again, to stop them and protect our public land for public use, [rather than it becoming] a cheap product to the timber industry, as corporate welfare.”

FOBSS and RACE, again with the aid of Tom Buchele, now a long-established figure in environmental law and natural resources litigation, filed suit in a federal court today against the Forest Service to halt that proposed logging project.

The lawsuit points out that a Categorical Exclusion is not allowed if there are extraordinary circumstances involved—in this case steep slopes with thin soils, close proximity to a National Natural Landmark, and the presence of endangered species in the area. The organizations believe the Forest Service failed to acknowledge these factors and even allegedly worked to hide them from the public.

It is a time of increasing danger and alarm for our country’s public lands, with the White House and its allies pushing to force the sale of federal public lands under the excuse of needing a place for more housing.

This move to enrich corporations, combined with federal funding freezes and cuts, puts the health, if not the existence, of public lands at risk. Capital Press, an agricultural newspaper on the West Coast, reported a proposed $342 million reduction to the Forest Service management budget for the next fiscal year, and an additional $50 million elimination of funding for a forest restoration program as well as “recreation, vegetation and watershed management [and] land management regulation.”

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget announced this reduced funding on May 2, 2025, and said it “supports the highest priorities in forest management including timber sales, hazardous fuels removal, mineral extraction, grazing, and wildlife habitat management.”

If you would like to hike the Bell Smith Springs National Natural Landmark with a knowledgeable guide, eat homemade pie by the Ohio River, and hear more tales from a 30-year fight for the trees and water of America, contact Sam Stearns at bellsmithsprings@hotmail.com.