Wildfire, workforce reductions, and the timber economy dominated USDA undersecretary nominee and Clearwater Analytics co-founder Michael Boren’s nomination hearing in the Senate Ag committee on June 3. But beyond the hearing room, conversations swirled about the Idaho businessman’s confrontational past with the very agency he would be overseeing.
President Trump nominated Boren for Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment on January 16. If the Senate confirms Boren for the role, this position would effectively put him in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of land across the nation. The nomination and recent Senate committee hearing — which only five of the committee’s 23 members attended — has elicited criticism and frustration from those concerned about Boren’s history of disputes with the agency.
In his younger years, Boren racked up some experience working for and with the Forest Service, a scant resume that still makes him more qualified than some of President Trump’s other nominees for leadership roles in agencies they have little background with. In his testimony, Boren spoke of a long familial history with the Forest Service, one ripe with sentimentality and respect.
“The United States Forest Service has always been a part of my life,” Boren said during his testimony. “My father worked for the Clayton Ranger District in central Idaho in the summers.”
The Clayton Ranger District was one of many ranger districts within the Salmon-Challis National Forest. It has since become a work center and the area is now part of the Challis-Yankee Fork/Middle Fork Ranger District, according to a Forest Service employee.
“He spent long hours there, there was too much to do and too few employees,” Boren continued. “I know it seems surprising that we’re back to that today, but I think it’s maybe always the case. And somehow, he and the ranger got it done. To me, the ranger was larger than life. He was a really important person in our county, and I really looked up to him.”
Boren detailed his father’s experience with the Interagency Fire Center in Boise and his own experience with his older brother Dave buying Forest Service timber and turning it into fence posts and poles to sell to neighboring ranchers. Boren and Dave also worked as GS-1 employees for the Forest Service at one point, planting trees.
But Boren also has recent experience working against the agency. Skeletons in his closet include clashes with Forest Service officials, unpermitted construction projects on both private inholdings and protected public lands within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, legal battles resulting from the fallout of those projects, and even allegations of flying a helicopter roughly a dozen feet over a trail crew working on a Forest Service easement on his brother’s property in 2020. (This harassment resulted in the Justice Department filing for a temporary restraining order against Boren at the time, but it was not granted.)
In 2021, Boren submitted a conditional use permit application to Custer County officials to construct an airstrip on his Hell Roaring Ranch within the SNRA, even though opponents argued he had already begun construction and use of the airstrip long before submitting the application. Aerial photos published by the New York Times show a disrupted strip of land on the Hell Roaring Ranch as early as 2016, a year after Boren purchased the property.
Once his permit was eventually approved, Boren sued four opponents for defamation after they publicly criticized his application. Custer County District Court judge Stevan H. Thompson threw out three of the four lawsuits, siding with defendants who characterized the lawsuits as “frivolous” and an infringement of their First Amendment rights. But the dismissal was appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court, which ruled in December that the lower courts had erred. Now, the cases are going back to district court.
Those supportive of Boren’s nomination seem to consider his recent antagonistic history with the Forest Service not just forgivable, but one of his best assets. Herein lies the irony of Boren’s nomination, an irony that Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) only further demonstrated with his introduction of Boren at the start of the hearing.
“There’s been a lot of media about disagreements [Boren] had with the federal government,” Risch says in his introduction. “In Idaho, we have all this federal land, and there are pieces of ground called inholdings. If you’re from east of the Mississippi, you’ve never heard of inholdings. But when you’re from out West, as a lot of our members are, they know what an inholding is. When you have inholdings, usually the BLM and the Forest Service are not really happy with them. They aren’t always the best neighbor. I’ve never run into anybody with an inholding property that hasn’t had some disagreement with their neighbor, the federal government.”
An inholding is defined as a non-federal piece of property surrounded on all sides by federal lands. Despite Risch’s characterization of this type of private parcel as limited to west of the Mississippi, inholdings occur within White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont, Nahala National Forest in southwestern North Carolina, and many other sizable Forest Service holdings across the country. And while the federal government might be seen as a rude and burdensome neighbor in some circles, others consider 360 degrees of accessible public lands a good thing, well worth the dollars they’ve likely shelled out to afford such a “location, location, location.”
Now, the only thing standing between Boren and a confirmation is a Senate vote. Given how the GOP leads the 53-45-2 party split, many assume Boren will pass with flying colors. He and his wife purchased a $6 million apartment in Washington D.C. in February, E&E News reports.
“This is the right guy for this job,” Risch continues. “I commend the President of the United States for choosing him for this particular position, and I would commend his nomination to you. I know you will look at this favorably and civilly.”
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