A logging truck drives on the Interstate 5 bridge in 2024 in Portland. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Walk into the heart of the Deschutes National Forest in the summer and usually you can feel it and see it.

The duff is a weave of dry carpet. The shrubs and pines may not be suffering, but they could use moisture that is not to be found.

The setting is arranged for wildfire, just needing some lightning or human carelessness.

In Congress, they are debating what to do “to return resilience to overgrown fire-prone forested lands.” The answer that passed the House and is now being considered in the Senate is the Fix Our Forests Act. It passed relatively easily in the House. It may also pass the Senate and go on to President Trump.

The bill has many of the “right” words – community wildfire risk reduction, collaborative restoration, commonsense litigation reform and so on.

Will it protect communities from fire and smoke? It might.

But the question is if it is the best Congress can do. We don’t think so.

The Fix Our Forests Act triples the size of forest areas where exceptions can be made to environmental laws and reduces public input to perhaps nothing. It would make it easy to log vast stretches of federal land, up to 10,000 acres or 15 square miles. The change could mean that even the largest and most fire-prone trees could be logged.

The bill does that by essentially weakening environmental protections that require more analysis and review, the National Environmental Policy Act. Environmental reviews and public input do slow work to restore forests and can build frustration. Strip them away and on public lands, the government becomes all harvester and no steward.

President Trump also issued an executive order on March 1, aiming to remove protections from more than half the land managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The goal is to increase timber production.

The focus should be to reduce wildfire risk to lives and property. The focus of the federal government should be on thinning federal lands closest to communities — communities like Bend.

Sustainable timber production is important. Protecting lives and property needs to be the priority.