A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Federal law protects about 5% of the United States as wilderness areas. That's more territory than the state of California. Wilderness generally means no motorized access or motors. Now, though, some chainsaws are allowed. Here's the Mountain West News Bureau's Rachel Cohen.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I'll switch with you in, like, a second.
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RACHEL COHEN, BYLINE: The Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho, is one of the most remote places in the lower 48 states. A couple hours from the nearest town, a group of teens is clearing trees that have fallen over trails with axes and metal saws.
MARLENA NELSON: So, like, having to do a cut here makes sense.
COHEN: Leader Marlena Nelson (ph) works for a wilderness nonprofit. The group is using traditional tools because the Wilderness Act bans motorized equipment.
NELSON: It's really easy to kind of rush through things if you can go as quickly as possible, if you have a motorized tool to kind of do a lot of the heavy lifting. But here, this work really requires a lot of teamwork.
COHEN: The teams push a 4-foot crosscut saw back and forth.
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COHEN: This is what wilderness trail maintenance usually looks like. But commercial guides who run hunting, fishing or horseback riding trips say the hand tools aren't cutting it. Travis Bullock (ph) is an outfitter in central Idaho. He says trails he went to as a kid have all but disappeared.
TRAVIS BULLOCK: They haven't been cleared in decades. I can think of one trail in my area - there's a sign there still. But once you look past the sign, you can't even tell it was a trail.
COHEN: Outfitters in Idaho have been asking to use chainsaws for years, saying debris from wildfires and disease is piling up. So they asked the Forest Service for an exemption.
BULLOCK: There was a little bit of me that was pretty spiteful over the years, over the decades that I've been told no, you can't clear those trails. And I was frustrated. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to be the first outfitter in Idaho to use a chainsaw legally.
COHEN: After some analysis, the Forest Service agreed chainsaws were necessary. It said its own staff and nonprofits can't keep up with the rate of falling trees. It gave the outfitters the green light to use chainsaws on several hundred miles of trail over the next three years. That day, Bullock took videos of his son and employee putting them to work.
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COHEN: He says they cleared about 500 trees in a single day.
BULLOCK: It felt good. The reality is, if we'd have had the same three people with a crosscut saw, it would've taken us a week.
COHEN: Bullock says he needs clear trails to get clients safely into the backcountry and to access hunting spots where he's authorized to lead trips but can't get to.
BULLOCK: Wilderness was not intended to keep people out.
COHEN: But George Nickas with the nonprofit Wilderness Watch says the Wilderness Act did aim to limit human interference.
GEORGE NICKAS: It's really not even about us. It's about nature. It's about the places. It's kind of nature's bill of rights.
COHEN: He thinks the Forest Service created a self-inflicted wound by slashing staff. In President Trump's second term, the agency has lost close to 6,000 permanent workers. And Nickas worries the authorization could open the door to more exemptions. Outfitters in Wyoming have also asked the Forest Service to use chainsaws. And the Trump administration is reviewing wilderness policies more broadly.
NICKAS: If they can chip away and chip away and chip away at it, and make it less and less meaningful, then pretty soon it's wilderness in name only.
COHEN: The chainsaw window ended in early August. Outfitters say they cleared thousands of trees, some piled 10 feet high, and will be back next year.
For NPR News, I'm Rachel Cohen.
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