Help Defend Old-Growth Forests Nationwide!
America’s mature and old-growth forests are crucial for our climate future. Help us secure stronger protections for them by adding your name to our petition today.
UPDATE: LANDWATCH HAS SENT OUR PETITION IN
If you still need to sign on, head to https://www.protectourforests.org/ to submit a comment before 11:59 pm on Sept 20, 2024.
Mature and old-growth trees and forests protect our climate by absorbing and storing carbon, boost resilience to fire, help regulate temperatures, filter drinking water, and shelter wildlife. Logging these trees deprives us of the benefits and beauty of our largest, oldest trees.
Right now, the U.S. Forest Service is working to amend every national forest plan in the country to protect old growth, which could become one of the most meaningful safeguards for federal forests that we have seen in decades. The proposed amendments would limit the removal of old-growth trees across 128 forest management units nationwide — but they do not go far enough to prevent old growth logging or to protect mature forests.
As part of the national Climate Forests coaltion, we’re asking the U.S. Forest Service to strengthen their proposal to secure better protections for Amercia’s old-growth and mature forests.
Together, we could finally end the harmful practice of logging our old-growth trees for profit, and chart out a course to allow mature trees to keep growing and become the next generation of old-growth.
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Can you believe that old-growth forests on our federal lands still lack protections from logging? Our National Forests should be held in public trust for the enormous benefits they provide to the climate, to wildlife, and to communities who depend on them. But too often, they’re treated like crops to be harvested, rather than the valuable climate champions that they are.
Now is our chance to do something about it. The outcomes of this process, and how meaningful they actually are, will depend on how far the public can push the Forest Service to establish enforceable protections.
The biodiversity and climate crises are closely intertwined, and we know that our solutions must rise to match the magnitude of the challenges we face. To fully address these twin crises we need lasting protective measures for forests that safeguard both mature and old-growth trees.
The public can read the full DEIS and submit comments by visiting the USFS project page. The comment period closes September 20, 2024.