After a year of secret, behind-closed-door negotiations, the U.S. Forest Service recently authorized massive amounts of gas-powered chainsaw use in the largest contiguous Wilderness in the Lower 48 with no opportunities for public comment, no environmental review, and no regard for federal laws, including the Wilderness Act.
Incredibly, the chainsaws in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness will not be fired up by Forest Service personnel, but by private commercial outfitters and guides.
Making matters worse, based on internal Forest Service documents Wilderness Watch obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), there is justifiable concern that chainsaw use by commercial outfitters could expand to other Wildernesses nation-wide.
In May 2025, the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association (IOGA) wrote to Forest Service Chief Thomas Schultz requesting battery-powered chainsaw use to clear trails in the 2.4 million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho. The Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association soon followed suit with its own letter requesting chainsaw use in designated Wildernesses in that state. Other states’ outfitter groups may be piling on as well.
These letters were followed by a year’s worth of secret meetings and negotiations between the Forest Service and commercial outfitters on the chainsaw issue. One internal Forest Service document on a nationwide chainsaw authorization said that electric chainsaws were the “minimum tool” under the 1964 Wilderness Act. Another Forest Service analysis, we’ve been told, said that any chainsaw use would violate the Wilderness Act.
A year later, in May 2026, the Forest Service issued a final decision (which, incidentally, cannot be found anywhere) to allow gas-powered chainsaws for seven months a year for up to three years on 542 miles of trail in about half of the River of No Return Wilderness within the boundaries of the Salmon-Challis National Forest. This is one of the largest motorized intrusions into designated Wilderness ever, and it was done, unapologetically, through a backroom deal with commercial interests and with zero public oversight.
The Wilderness Act bans motorized vehicles and tools like chainsaws from Wilderness. This is part of what sets Wilderness apart from other public lands: protecting an area’s wildness. A major project like the chainsaw decision should also have had environmental review conducted with opportunity for public comment under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Forest Service has ignored both laws with this decision.
The Forest Service has unfortunately been gutting its once-proud wilderness program for decades, with declining wilderness budgets and fewer and fewer wilderness rangers and wilderness trail crews. The firing of even more wilderness staff during the past year and a half of the Trump administration has only worsened the situation. And now, so few Forest Service staff remain on the ground, the agency claims that commercial interests wielding chainsaws in Wilderness seven months out of the year for the next three years is justified, even though the agency has cleared wilderness trails for decades with crosscut saws—even in heavy blowdown years—and volunteer groups like the Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation will continue to use crosscut saws to clear trails the “Wilderness way” in that same Wilderness this year and beyond.
And to top it all off, the Forest Service is corruptly abdicating its wilderness stewardship responsibilities to allow throngs of chainsaw-wielding commercial outfitters, who benefit financially from this priceless Wilderness, to roar through the River of No Return and cut up the Wilderness Act for the next three years with little or no guidance or supervision from the Forest Service, defiling the quiet and solitude and wildness that this epic Wilderness is supposed to provide.
Wilderness supporters need to voice their opposition to this ill-advised—and illegal—plan to unleash chainsaws in Wilderness with their members of Congress (202-224-3121) in order to protect the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. If we can’t stop this assault in Idaho, we may soon see expanded chainsaw use by commercial interests all over the National Wilderness Preservation System.
Kevin Proescholdt is the conservation director for Wilderness Watch, a national wilderness conservation organization headquartered in Missoula, Montana.
NOTE: A version of this opinion piece originally appeared in the Idaho Statesman.
Resist! Now is the time for civil disobedience.
I cleared trails for a lot of years both in and out of wilderness. Chainsaws are awesome and fun and an amazingly efficient tool. But wilderness is very special as well and every now and then chainsaws are necessary, which is why they have the ability to make individual exemptions based on need. A blanket policy allowing it seems wrong to me. I think that if they hadn't gutted trail crews across the national forests that this would not be as big of an issue. Trail crews are legitimately some of the hardest workers in the Forest Service and it makes more sense to just fund them properly therefore in cases like this, at least it's the people who know the area and have some stock in the outcome who are allowed to fire up the saws.