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old-growth forests
As Broadway's Redwood Soars, Real Forest Canopies Are Vanishing
Broadway's spotlight on redwoods helps us understand why what happens above our heads matters so much for our future below.
Apr 22, 2025
A woman flees devastating personal loss and finds herself at the base of towering redwood trees in Northern California. There, she persuades two botanists to let her climb hundreds of feet above the forest floor into a hidden world that transforms her perspective—and her life. This isn't the latest adventure film or bestselling memoir. It's Redwood, Broadway's unlikely hit musical that's bringing attention to one of nature's most overlooked but critical ecosystems.
Many of us working in forest conservation and restoration management were delighted when it opened on Broadway. When a musical drives sold-out audiences to stand and cheer for characters climbing into a forest canopy, it creates a cultural moment that conservation science alone never could—bringing vital attention to something that most Americans never think to look up and notice.
As a child in the 1960s, I wandered among ancient redwoods, craning my neck upward in wonder, while my parents worked to establish Redwood National Park. My father, Edgar, who would later receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his conservation work, and my mother, Peggy, who wrote about redwoods and the need to protect them and lobbying President John F. Kennedy's administration to do so, taught me that what made these giants special wasn't just their massive trunks but the entire living forest system from roots to crown. Those early lessons helped shape my life's work because what happens hundreds of feet above the forest floor matters more than most realize.
The more people recognize the vital role and wonder of forest canopies, the more momentum we build for their restoration and protection.
These aerial systems represent nature's overlooked masterpiece—a complex world scientists call the "eighth continent." Redwood canopies host biodiversity found nowhere else. Leather-leaf ferns create massive mats—up to the size of cars—that can store 5,000 gallons of water per acre, keeping forests cool and moist during summer droughts. The dense foliage also captures fog moisture that sustains the entire forest below while creating microclimates that buffer against climate extremes.
Canopies contribute to the entire forest system, linking the top to the bottom of the forest. Dust captured in the abundant foliage of ferns and huckleberry plants combined with accumulated organic matter forms rich "aerial soil" that becomes the foundation for entire sky-high communities. Rare lichens, wandering salamanders, and small mammals thrive in this elevated habitat, maintaining delicate ecological balances. From these heights, the benefits cascade downward: Canopy cover shades streams, cooling water for salmon and other temperature-sensitive aquatic species, integrating the entire forest system from treetop to riverbed into a single, interconnected climate buffer.
Yet this hidden world faces a crisis. Only 5% of old-growth redwood forests remain and have intact canopy ecosystems. Young, secondary forests that are constantly harvested lack the structure—and are not allowed time to develop—to support these rich, diverse aerial worlds. Only the largest, oldest trees—many hundreds of years old—host these critical ecosystems, and they're increasingly rare.
But hope is taking root in innovative restoration work. Working with Cal Poly Humboldt's professor Stephen Sillett and research associate Marie Antoine, we have begun transplanting fern mats, collected from the forest floor after winter storms, into the tallest trees in secondary redwood forests we conserve and manage, rebuilding canopy ecosystems from scratch. Working in our Van Eck forest near Fieldbrook, California, we've nurtured these ferns and then "planted" them hundreds of feet high in trees that will remain permanently protected. These specially selected trees are designated as "Potentially Elite Trees" (PETs)—the giants of tomorrow. Individual old trees are a lot like the oldest elephants in a herd; they contain the wisdom and resources to help an otherwise young forest function as an old forest, just as those old elephants guide their herds. And, we continue to harvest timber on these forests—on average a million board foot a year—while restoring the structure and function of old forests.
Now, we are expanding our efforts, adding huckleberry to our plantings to support new sky gardens. This patient approach creates homes for birds, salamanders, and countless insects, jump-starting processes that would naturally take centuries.
Redwood captures an essential truth: Forests are not just timber resources. They're living systems with lessons to teach us about building resilience in an uncertain future.
The Broadway experience provides audiences a glimmer of what happens when people encounter these giants in real life—and that's critically important. The more people recognize the vital role and wonder of forest canopies, the more momentum we build for their restoration and protection. But awareness must translate to action.
As debate rages on the role of federal forests and the need to protect their old and mature forests, there is also a major opportunity for action on private forests, where landowners' decisions will endure beyond a political cycle. For private forests, working forest conservation easements offer a proven path forward—providing landowners financial incentives to conserve and manage for older forests, develop complex structures, and designate future "PETs" that can support the function of old forests. This can transform forest recovery from centuries-long waits to achievable timelines within human lifespans.
Recent sweeping cuts to the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service workforce threaten our old forests. Rangers and scientists do more than protect and research forests—they guide visitors to witness these majestic ecosystems firsthand. These cuts, applied "like an ax rather than a scalpel", endanger both the health of our forests and the transformative experiences for the public. When people stand beneath ancient trees and look upward, they understand viscerally why these forests and their canopies must be protected.
Protecting and restoring these overlooked canopy ecosystems has never been more urgent as climate change accelerates. Broadway's spotlight on redwoods helps us understand why what happens above our heads matters so much for our future below. When audiences gasp as Idina Menzel spins and embraces that massive trunk, they glimpse not just theatrical magic but a vision of what we stand to lose—and what we must fight to restore and preserve. The living world above demands our attention, protection, and active restoration—not just in California's iconic redwoods, but in every forest ecosystem on Earth.
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The Fix Our Forests Act and the Politics of Wildfire
Logging interests and the U.S. Forest Service have a history of using the wildfire threat to create “emergency” authority to bypass environmental reviews and curtail judicial oversight.
Mar 18, 2025
When on January 23 of this year, California Senator Jarred Huffman stood on the House floor to voice his opposition to the Fix Our Forests Act, or FOFA,, he bitterly noted how the bill had been rushed to a vote without normal consultation.
The reason for the rush was obvious. Fires were raging in the suburbs of Los Angeles and FOFA’s proponents wanted to capitalize on the tragedy to pitch their bill, which in the name of wildfire prevention exempts vast acreage of backcountry logging from ordinary scientific and judicial oversight. The irony is that the LA fires had no connection with forests whatsoever. They began as grass and brush fires near populated areas, which, fanned by ferocious Santa Ana winds, quickly spread building to building, with disastrous results.
The irony widens when you consider that in 2024, Huffman, along with California Republican Jay Obernolte, introduced a bill that actually would help communities deal with fire. Called the Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act, it proposed $1 billion per year to help communities harden homes and critical infrastructure while also creating defensive space around their perimeters. The bill was introduced this year yet again, six days after FOFA was rushed to a vote, but it hasn’t even been given a hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee. That committee is chaired by Oklahoma Republican Bruce Westerman, who, it turns out, is the chief sponsor of the Fix Our Forests Act.
Once again, it’s the same old formula: slash citizen oversight in the name of wildfire reduction.
Do you see the political convolutions at work here? A very real fire danger facing communities is used to promote a bill focused primarily on back country “fuels reduction,” far from such communities, while the Huffman-Obernolte bill, that focuses on the communities themselves, gets nowhere. The process not only puts millions of acres of mature and old-growth forests at risk of massive “mechanical treatments,” it leaves the immediate fire dangers faced by communities largely unaddressed.
This political formula is nothing new. Twenty two years ago, then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, which also sought environmental restrictions for expanded logging under the pretext of preventing wildfires like those in California. The concern for conservationists was the same then as it is now—logging interests and the U.S. Forest Service using the wildfire threat to create “emergency” authority to bypass environmental reviews and curtail judicial oversight, providing easier access to mature and old-growth forests, while doing little in the way of home hardening and community protection.
Proponents of the Fix our Forests Act would counter that there are provisions within the bill that help coordinate grant applications for communities. That’s well and good, but falls far short of what the Huffman-Obernolte bill provides, which not only includes major funding to harden homes and critical infrastructure, but helps with early detection and evacuation planning and initiates Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience plans for insurance certification.
Further, there is a plethora of research that contradicts the notion that fuels reduction and forest thinning protects communities from wildfire. In fact, intensive forest management is shown to often increase fire severity. Meanwhile, the industry position that forest protection increases fire risk doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, years of mechanical treatments have done little to solve the problem, while doing tremendous ecological damage.
Now we have President Donald Trump’s all-caps Executive Order: “IMMEDIATE EXPANSION OF AMERICAN TIMBER PRODUCTION.” Once again, it’s the same old formula: slash citizen oversight in the name of wildfire reduction. The order calls for action to “reduce unnecessarily lengthy processes and associated costs related to administrative approvals for timber production, forest management, and wildfire risk reduction treatments,” while putting community safety up as the justification. From the first paragraph: “Furthermore, as recent disasters demonstrate, forest management and wildfire risk reduction projects can save American lives and communities.” Only they don’t. The only things shown to save lives and communities are the types of actions put forth by the Community Protections and Wildfire Resilience act.
The Democratic Party has a history of protecting public lands and a constituency that expects such protection. A similar thing can be said of certain moderate Republicans, where a courageous spirit prevails when it comes to environmental protection. If there ever was a time to remember that tradition and that spirit, it would be now.
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Green Groups Applaud 1 Million Public Comments Urging Biden to Protect Old-Growth Forests
"The Forest Service should listen to the public and finalize policies that truly safeguard our oldest forests," a coalition of environmental organizations advised.
Sep 21, 2024
Green groups on Friday pointed to the more than 1 million public comments urging the U.S. Forest Service to protect old-growth forests from logging in urging the Biden administration to increase what critics say are inadequate protections for mature trees in a proposed federal amendment.
The Forest Service (USFS)—a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture—received massive input during four rounds of public comment on the National Old-Growth Amendment Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
The USFS' proposed national old-growth amendment follows a 2022 executive order by President Joe Biden that directed the agency to draft policies to protect mature trees in national forests, which are imperiled by but also play a critical role in fighting fossil fuel-driven climate change.
"The national old-growth amendment should be a transformative policy that positions the United States as an international leader in harnessing nature to confront the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis."
Climate campaigners panned Biden's order as "grossly inadequate." Since the executive order, the Biden administration has allocated $50 million for old-growth forest conservation under the Inflation Reduction Act, which the president signed in August 2022.
In June, USFS announced a draft environmental impact statement for a proposed amendment to Biden's directive. Environmentalists called the draft a "step forward" while urging the administration to do more to protect mature forests.
"Since 2022, hundreds of thousands of people have called for an end to logging old-growth and urged that our mature forests also be protected. The Forest Service should listen to the public and finalize policies that truly safeguard our oldest forests," a coalition of green groups including the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Earthjustice, Environment America Research and Policy Center, National Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and WildEarth Guardians said in a joint statement.
"As the Forest Service reads the comments it has received over the last 90 days, it will find a common theme. The old-growth policy proposed in June fails to meet the central mission of the executive order—it does not protect old-growth trees from logging and allows projects that would log old-growth forests out of existence through numerous loopholes. The policy also does nothing to protect mature forests, which are needed to increase the abundance and distribution of old-growth trees and forests."
As CBD explained:
Mature and old-growth forests are carbon storage powerhouses. With thicker protective bark and higher canopies than younger trees, mature and old-growth trees are more resilient to wildfire. They also provide critical wildlife habitat, filter clean drinking water for communities, provide countless outdoor recreation opportunities, and capture the imaginations of Americans young and old.
Federal forest management prioritizes timber production and routinely sidesteps science to turn big, old trees into lumber and wood chips. Logging releases a significant amount of stored carbon, which can take centuries to be recaptured. It also eliminates older trees' ability to sequester additional carbon and damages the other ecosystem services and biodiversity values these forests provide. Many older stands and trees have no enduring protection, and hundreds of thousands of acres in national forests are at risk of being logged.
"The national old-growth amendment should be a transformative policy that positions the United States as an international leader in harnessing nature to confront the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis," the groups' statement asserted. "We hope to see the nationwide old-growth amendment strengthened so it can become a centerpiece of our nation's climate and conservation legacies."
In a separate statement, Environment America public lands campaign director Ellen Montgomery said that "the Forest Service should listen to the more than a million people who have commented over the last two years, urging it to end logging of old-growth trees."
"The response from the public to our on-the-ground efforts to build support for a strong national old-growth amendment has shown that people want to see older trees protected," she continued. "These trees and forests are home to wildlife that we love from birds to bears. They are our allies to fight back against climate change, and all we have to do is make sure they stay upright."
"We hope the Forest Service recognizes the truth that the public knows: old-growth trees are worth more standing," Montgomery added.
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