Green Groups Praise 'Step Forward' on Biden Old-Growth Forest Plan

Environmental groups on Thursday welcomed the U.S. government's latest progress on President Joe Biden's directive to protect old-growth forests, which are threatened by but also play a key role in combating fossil fuel-driven climate change.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Forest Service announced a draft environmental impact statement for the proposed national old-growth forest plan amendment, which is set to appear in the Federal Register Friday, launching a 90-day public comment period.

"President Biden made a commitment to protect mature and old-growth forests in the United States, and today's announcement gets us one step closer to achieving that," said Sierra Club forest campaign manager Alex Craven. "Conserving what remains of our oldest forests is undoubtedly a positive step towards climate action."

"We look forward to engaging in this process to ensure the amendment not only retains, but increases, the amount of old-growth forests across the country," Craven continued. "Shifting our approach to national forests from resources meant for extraction to natural wonders worth preserving is long overdue."

"The Forest Service must fully meet President Biden's historic directive to protect old growth, as well as our much vaster mature forests, which still remain exposed to commercial logging."

On Earth Day in 2022, Biden issued an executive order—and a few months, he later signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed $50 million toward old-growth conservation. Since then, the Forest Service and Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have been working on efforts to conserve ancient U.S. trees.

"With our nation's forests absorbing more than 10% of our annual greenhouse gas emissions, protecting and expanding old growth is critical to delivering on the Biden-Harris administration's and conservation priorities," White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory said in a statement Thursday.

BLM and the Forest Service have completed a historic inventory, which showed that they collectively manage approximately 32 million acres of old growth and 80 million acres of mature forests nationwide. The service also recently finalized a related threat analysis.

"The Forest Service continues to move this process forward," Earthjustice senior legislative representative Blaine Miller-McFeeley said Thursday. "However, the Forest Service must fully meet President Biden's historic directive to protect old growth, as well as our much vaster mature forests, which still remain exposed to commercial logging under the proposal."

According to The Associated Press, which obtained an early copy, the new analysis "shows that officials intend to reject a blanket prohibition on old-growth logging that's long been sought by some environmentalists" after concluding the policy "would make it harder to thin forests to better protect communities against wildfires that have grown more severe as the planet has warmed."

However, "the exceptions under which logging would be allowed are unlikely to placate the timber industry and Republicans in Congress, who have pushed back against any new restrictions," the AP reported.

As the Wilderness Society highlighted, the administration's proposal:

• Establishes affirmative direction that the conservation of our oldest forests is a critical part of addressing the wildfire crisis;
• Provides some protection for remaining old-growth forests from harmful logging;
• Creates a roadmap that promotes a collaborative, community-led approach for conserving old-growth forests, including identifying forests that should be stewarded to become old-growth in the future;
• Elevates the role of tribes in forest management through co-stewardship agreements; and
• Includes the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska within the amendment's scope of old-growth conservation.

"We need the U.S. Forest Service to create a clear path for old-growth conservation paired with climate-informed wildfire management, if our oldest forests are to remain for generations to come," said the group's president, Jamie Williams. "The proposed national old-growth amendment is a step in the right direction, but it must go further to protect and restore resilient old-growth forests in a way that meets the challenges of the changing climate."

The new draft analysis comes as deadly wildfires rage in the U.S. West while extreme heat hits the Midwest and Northeast. Scientists stress that both fires and heatwaves are more likely because of the climate crisis.