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Only 1% of the nation’s forests are old growth – that is, more than a century old.
The U.S. Forest Service is advancing a plan to help threatened old-growth adapt to climate change and the extreme weather that comes with it. The change to federal forest management regulations is intended to provide consistency and direction in the conservation of the nation’s remaining ancient forests.
The public has an opportunity to provide input on the change with an environmental impact statement on the way.
The proposed amendment will help enforce a Biden administration order from two years ago, which asked agencies to research ways to better conserve mature forests as the climate crisis challenges their survival.
However, some environmental advocates in North Carolina expressed concern this week that the Forest Service is too concerned with logging to truly nurture the nation’s old growth. They said the proposed amendment has too many loopholes that could have negative effects on climate.
“It allows old growth to be logged under loopholes and allowances such as proactive stewardship,” Will Harlan, Southeast director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said.
“So we urge the forest service to finalize a stronger final amendment that prohibits the commercial sale of old growth and closes the many bulldozer size loopholes and exceptions that make it easier to log our last remaining old growth forests.”
The Forest Services generates hundreds of millions in revenue each year from timber sales.
MountainTrue (an Asheville-based non-profit), the Southern Environmental Law Center, Environment North Carolina, and others have protested Forest Service logging policy in the past, including in a recent case successfully suing the agency to stop logging in an area of the Nantahala National Forest.
Other logging projects in the Nantahala continue, with the Buck and Southside projects looking to log over a thousand combined acres.
Old growth is defined uniquely dependent on where it is found, but is influenced by tree species, soil, climate, and history of disturbance, in addition to the age of the trees.
Josh Kelly of MountainTrue estimated around 90,000 acres of old growth forest in Western North Carolina.
In a letter to the Forest Service written as a response to the agency’s solicitation for public comment, the Southern Environmental Law Center and MountainTrue expressed hope that the Forest Service would increase its “passive management” stance. The approach involves leaving healthy, productive forests alone to grow into old age – rather than “proactive stewardship,” which is favored by the amendment.
There are other ways, they argued, in which the amendment as currently offered is too vague and might leave room open for interpretation.
The Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of land, has historically permitted commercial logging on some old-growth trees to meet its timber and land management goals. In so doing, the agency often cites the potential that younger forests have to store carbon – namely, that as younger trees grow, they gobble up more carbon than older trees would. This is often used as a justification for timbering in combating climate change.
However, environmentalists who are frustrated with concessions for logging say old-growth forests are just as important to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Scientists and advocates have pointed out the carbon hidden away in older trees, all of which enters the atmosphere when they are cut and decompose. Mature forests, meanwhile, have been shown to be more fire resilient and biodiverse, storing carbon in their soils.
“Centuries of stored carbon helped to fight climate change,” Will Harlan said. “A century of providing clean water and habitat for wildlife and magnificent places to hike and explore. But… it just takes a few days to cut down an old growth forest.”
The public comment period for the Old Growth Amendment ends Sept. 20, at midnight. After that, the Forest Service will review comments, with a final environmental impact statement expected in the winter.
