President Donald Trump’s plans to use the “God Squad” and emergency provisions of the Endangered Species Act to promote widespread logging on public lands are likely illegal and little more than rhetoric without the force of law, legal experts say.

Trump signed an executive order on March 1 requiring the US Forest Service and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to expedite timber harvesting on federal lands.

It directs agencies to use ESA emergency regulations and the Endangered Species Committee, also known as the “God Squad,” to find ways to speed up approval of timber harvests and report to Trump about endangered species that stand in the way of logging.

The order also requires the agencies to create categorical exclusions for timber sales under the National Environmental Policy Act. A separate order, signed after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on imports of Canadian lumber, declares that timber and lumber imports pose a national security risk.

Trump previously ordered the God Squad, which is chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, to meet quarterly to help expedite oil and gas development on federal lands. The committee has rarely met since Congress created it in 1978 and has only ever reduced endangered species protections twice—the whooping crane in 1979 and the northern spotted owl in 1992.

Both orders came after US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins named former timber executive Tom Schultz as US Forest Service chief. Schultz previously served as vice-president of resources and government affairs at Idaho Forest Group, a large lumber producer.

The Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a wood products industry trade group, said it wants to see logging on federal lands double.

“The President’s Executive Order rightly recognizes that our National Forests are undermanaged and can do a lot more to meet the demand for lumber in the US,” the coalition said in a statement. “The Forest Service has significant authority to expand timber management on the National Forest System, and they can do so while still protecting roadless and wilderness areas.”

Hot Air

The timber order’s directives say they must comply with existing law and do not create any enforceable law, making them little more than “a lot of hot air,” said John Leshy, a former Interior solicitor in the Clinton administration and emeritus professor at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco.

“It’s core could be summed up as ‘study, consider, recommend,’” Leshy said. The caveats that end the order “deprive even those exhortations of any enforceability or effect.”

The order amounts only to a shout out to timber harvesters—the “‘rape, ruin, and run’ guys,” Leshy said, quoting former Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus.

Murray Feldman, a partner at Holland & Hart LLP in Boise, Idaho, said in an email that the executive order is an “aspirational statement.”

The order doesn’t satisfy the qualifications for an emergency under ESA regulations, the use of which is generally limited to human health risks, he said.

“It is not clear what the unexpected human health risk is or might be from the policy desire for increased timber production or streamlined permitting for same on the federal lands,” Feldman said.

The order shows “the current Administration’s efforts to seek change through unilateral action are reaching their limit in areas like this where the Constitution specifically assigns that authority to another branch, Congress in this instance,” he said.

“If the Administration wants to remake timber policy on the federal lands, it needs to go the branch that has plenary authority over those lands and work there to implement any change it may seek. It cannot do so simply by issuing an Executive Order,” Feldman said.

It’s also unclear how timber sales could be planned, administered, and implemented when the government has just dismissed thousands of Forest Service employees, he said.

“It’s a little counterintuitive to be cutting personnel resources while also expecting to markedly increase timber production off the federal lands on a claimed emergency basis,” Feldman said.

Pressure to Log

The pressure to expedite widespread logging is intense in national forests, one national forest employee working on timber harvest approvals in Montana said Feb. 28. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared for their job.

National forest managers are demanding ever-higher timber production goals in forest districts that have fewer employees and smaller budgets to conduct endangered species and other environmental surveys required before timber sales can be approved, the employee said.

The Interior Department said in a statement that it is equipped to help meet Trump’s timber demands and will “remove barriers for timely timber harvests.” The USDA said in a statement that Rollins supports “Trump’s efforts to increase timber production across national forests nationwide,” and that doing so is part of the agency’s mission.

Environmental groups say the orders are illegal, and they’ll fight increased logging in court.

Executive orders are not laws, and don’t override provisions of the ESA, said Kristen Boyles, managing attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group.

The order’s direction to use the ESA to expedite logging violates laws for the management of national forests and BLM lands, she said.

“There is no part of the ESA that allows its use to ‘improve the speed of approving forestry projects’ or set up a standing Committee who’s purpose is to speed up timber production,” Boyles said in an email.

It’s illegal to force emergency consultation to happen in a “rubber stamp fashion” just to increase logging for a fake national security emergency over timber supplies, said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

“If Congress wanted a broader emergency authority, they would have written one into law,” she said, adding that the center will challenge the order in court.

If courts allow the order to stand, it will threaten drinking water supplies because national forests are a major municipal water source nationwide, and it will increase wildfire risk and threaten endangered species, she said.