Michael Boren, founder of a billion-dollar tech company, Idaho ranch owner and Trump donor, has clashed with the U.S. Forest Service for years.
He was accused of flying a helicopter dangerously close to a crew building a Forest Service trail, prompting officials to seek a restraining order. He got a caution from the Forest Service, and criticism from his neighbors, when he built a private airstrip on his Hell Roaring Ranch in a national recreation area. And in the fall, the Forest Service sent a cease-and-desist letter accusing a company that Mr. Boren controlled of building an unauthorized cabin on National Forest land.
Now, Mr. Boren is Mr. Trump’s nominee to oversee the very agency he has tussled with repeatedly.
On Tuesday, the Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing on Mr. Boren’s nomination to be the under secretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment, a role that would put him in charge of the Forest Service.
If confirmed, he would manage an agency that oversees almost 200 million acres of public lands across the United States, including maintaining trails, coordinating wildfire response and overseeing the sale of timber and other resources. He would also oversee the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which helps farmers and ranchers conserve natural resources on their own land.
Mr. Boren would be leading the Forest Service at a tumultuous time.
In April, the secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, issued an order removing environmental protections from almost 60 percent of national forests, or more than 112 million acres, mostly in the West. That came after Mr. Trump issued an executive order to increase logging on those lands by 25 percent.
The Forest Service has also fired thousands of workers as part of Mr. Trump’s drive to shrink the federal government.
Mr. Boren is “a successful businessman who has founded six companies,” Mr. Trump said in January, when he announced his nomination in a post on Truth Social. “Michael will work to reinvigorate Forest Management at a time when it is desperately needed,” he wrote. “Congratulations Michael!”
Some environmental groups and experts are wary.
“In a different world, one that existed a year ago, this would be a really, really strange appointment,” said Jerrold Long, a professor at the University of Idaho College of Law and former Justice Department official who specializes in land-use and environmental law. “His antagonism toward the Forest Service suggests that it’s consistent with what has happened at the federal agencies, where the intent is to radically reshape what the Forest Service does.”
In a statement, the Agriculture Department said Mr. Boren would “implement President Trump’s America First agenda and ensure our forest system is properly managed, productive, and resilient. We look forward to his swift confirmation by the Senate.” The White House, as well as lawyers and representatives representing the Boren family, did not respond to detailed questions for this article.
Mr. Boren made his fortune in technology and investing, and has little experience in public lands management. In 2001, he partnered with his brother Dave Boren and another banking associate to found Clearwater Analytics, an investment and accounting software company based in Boise, Idaho. He has also become a reliable Republican campaign donor, giving to the Republican National Committee as well as to Mr. Trump.
In 2021, Clearwater debuted on the New York Stock Exchange with a valuation of $5.5 billion. Mr. Boren no longer holds a position at the company.
Mr. Boren is a “visionary, a proven leader,” said Gov. Brad Little of Idaho, a Republican, regarding his nomination. “In Idaho, we manage our lands effectively and efficiently,” and Mr. Boren would “bring that same mentality to the Forest Service,” the governor said.
He and his brother both share a passion for ranching and own land in Idaho.
In 2015, Mr. Boren bought Hell Roaring Ranch, a 480-acre cattle ranch within the congressionally mandated Sawtooth National Recreation Area, an expanse of panoramic mountain terrain, lakes and rivers in central Idaho that is managed by the Forest Service. Private property is allowed within the recreation area, although rules prohibit development that detracts from its scenic, natural, historic or ecological value.
Soon after Mr. Boren bought the land, he set about flattening part of his pasture for what he told the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was “pasture improvement to eliminate gopher holes and weeds.”
But the 2,500-foot-long site looked very much like an airstrip, something that many of his neighbors said ran afoul of the rules that limit development in the recreation area. Mr. Boren then installed a million-dollar hangar and fuel tanks, and neighbors started to report small aircraft and helicopters taking off and landing at the airstrip.
Mr. Boren’s brother, Dave Boren, separately owns a 1,700-acre ranch in central Idaho. In 2019 Dave Boren sued the federal government over work on a Forest Service trail that cut through his property on an easement, saying the work would harm the environment as well as his use of his property.
The following summer, after a federal court had denied an injunction against the Forest Service’s work and trail construction had resumed, a helicopter registered to Michael Boren appeared and flew close to the construction crew. “We saw this helicopter less than a hundred feet off the ground, and it started coming toward us,” said Dave Coyner, who was leading the construction crew that day. “They were definitely trying to intimidate us.”
The Justice Department sought a restraining order against Mr. Boren, claiming he was piloting the craft and had “buffeted the government’s contractor with helicopter rotor wash, sediment and other debris during several low-level passes” and that contractor employees “understandably felt threatened.”
The order was ultimately not issued, though a U.S. magistrate judge warned Dave and Michael Boren against further interference with the project. “To hear that he’s being nominated to be under secretary of the Forest Service, that just blows me away,” Mr. Coyner said in an interview.
In February 2021, when Mr. Boren finally applied for a county permit for the airstrip, hundreds of people submitted public comments in opposition. Some accused him of having lied about his plans and of destroying the scenic Idaho landscape, and they dismissed Mr. Boren’s suggestion that he had intended the airstrip as a public service for use during emergencies.
“Michael Boren, a multimillionaire from Boise, is illegally operating an airport in the Sawtooth Valley without permits,” Gary Gadwa, a retired search and rescue operator, wrote in an opinion essay in the Idaho Falls Post Register. Idahoans needed to band together, he said, to “halt this dangerous precedent, which threatens one of the most beloved wilderness areas in our state.”
At a public hearing on his permit, televised by the local station KTVB7, Mr. Boren said he needed the modest airstrip to ranch. “We did everything that we could to do the right thing, he said. “We didn’t build an airport. It’s an irrigated pasture, and that’s where we land the aircraft.”
Mr. Boren overcame the opposition and received his county permit. The Forest Service warned him in an August 2021 letter against further work on the land. Any “future use or development of the property, including unlimited use of the airstrip” could lead the Forest Service to determine that the area had been significantly impaired, wrote Kirk Flannigan, an area ranger.
Then, Mr. Boren sued his critics.
In June 2022 he sued Mr. Gadwa and others who had spoken out against him for defamation. First Amendment lawyers and other legal observers said the lawsuit was designed to intimidate critics and stifle their right to freedom of speech.
In his amended complaint, Mr. Boren said the “defendants and their co-conspirators appear to hate Boren due, at least in part, to his success and his political and religious beliefs.” A spokesman for Mr. Boren’s family has previously said Mr. Boren is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The complaint did not elaborate on how Mr. Boren’s faith played a role.
The defendants have denied Mr. Boren’s claims.
Among the people Mr. Boren sued was Dick Fosbury, a county commissioner and celebrated Olympic champion who is known for inventing the Fosbury flop, a once-revolutionary high-jump style that today would be familiar to anyone who has ever watched the event: The jumper clears the bar backward, headfirst and with back arched. Mr. Fosbury, who had criticized Mr. Boren for constructing the airstrip without permits, died from cancer in March 2023.
Jon Conti, a Boise-based filmmaker, was also sued. He had briefly posted a YouTube video referring to a wealthy businessman who had “illegally” built an airport on his ranch and whom he described with an expletive. Mr. Conti declined to talk specifically about the case, fearing retaliation from Mr. Boren. “The Sawtooths are the last wild frontier, really untouched,” he said. “And I think that most Idahoans would like to see it stay that way.”
An Idaho district judge dismissed Mr. Boren’s defamation lawsuit in 2022, saying it had “the potential for a great chilling effect on constitutional rights.” Mr. Boren appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court, which in December said the lower court had erred in dismissing it. The case is now headed back to district court.
Mr. Boren has had other run-ins with the Forest Service, and with his neighbors.
In 2022, drivers found a gate blocking access to about a mile of Forest Service road that passes through private land owned by West Pass Ranch, LLC, whose owners included Mr. Boren. A sign blamed “numerous trespass and private property rights violations” for the closure. The Forest Service said at the time it had been working with the landowners to find a solution.
Last fall, the Forest Service sent a cease-and-desist letter to a company then registered to Mr. Boren, Galena Mines, after discovering what the agency said was an unauthorized cabin and cleared land within the National Forest System, close to private land held by the company.
Mr. Boren was removed from Galena Mines’ registration on Feb. 24. There is no indication of any mining plans. (The company is thought to have bought up old mining claims for access to the land.)
The Forest Service told Mr. Boren to restore the land by August, according to the letter. But now, the agency believes Galena Mines has built a waterway to the cabin in defiance of its request, according to three people with knowledge of the suspected infraction.
Mira Rojanasakul contributed reporting.
Hiroko Tabuchi covers pollution and the environment for The Times. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years in Tokyo and New York.
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