What Does the Future Hold For America’s Old-Growth Forests?
You can help determine the answer.
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. Photo: Jim Davis
America’s old-growth forests have largely vanished over the past two hundred years. The few remaining old-growth enclaves throughout Central Oregon and Pacific Northwest forests define some of our region’s most special and essential natural locales.
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 Climate Forests coalition, LandWatch and partners across the country are calling on the Forest Service to strengthen their proposal to secure better protections for the United States’ old-growth and mature forests.
We need as many people as possible to help us advocate for these protections, and you can be a part of the movement by adding your name to our petition and sharing it with your friends today!
Given the outstanding role mature and old-growth trees and forests in national forests play in ameliorating the climate and biodiversity crises, it is vital that Federal agencies establish meaningful safeguards for their conservation. Photo: Wasim Muklashy
Protecting what remains
On Earth Day 2022, President Biden released an Executive Order (EO 14072) committing the US to identify, inventory, and protect mature and old-growth forests on federal lands. The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are responsible for developing a meaningful and durable protection policy, and implementing those protections in the field.
Since the executive order, more than half a million people have submitted public comments calling for a formal rule to protect mature and old-growth trees and forests, in addition to dozens of letters to the U.S. Forest Service from key stakeholders — including Tribes, elected officials, and scientists — supporting the same.
On Dec. 19, 2023 the U.S. Forest Service proposed a nationwide amendment to all 128 forest plans to restrict logging of old-growth forests, and begin guiding stewardship of future old-growth forests. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for this proposal was released on June 21, 2024, kicking off a new public comment opportunity that will run through September 20, 2024.
Using forests to address climate change
Protecting what mature and old-growth trees and forests remain in the U.S. is an important tactic we can rely on to help mitigate and adapt to the mounting effects of climate change.
As trees grow into maturity and stately old age, they develop unique characteristics that provide a diverse set of impactful benefits to both human communities and the environment at large.
By storing and sequestering large amounts of atmospheric carbon for long periods of time, these “climate forests” actively mitigate the amount of anthropogenic carbon being released into the atmosphere that is the driving force behind modern climate change.
Mature and old-growth forests support high-functioning ecosystems with structurally complex and resilient habitat, which safeguards biodiversity and provides climate refugia for the organisms that live there.
As climate change continues to alter precipitation patterns, mature and old-growth forests help moderate the presence of water across landscapes. Large, old trees reduce flood and erosion risk while also increasing the availability of drinking water for communities struggling with the impacts of drought.
And, as rising average temperatures continue to extend and exacerbate fire seasons, mature and old-growth forests — which possess traits that make them naturally more resistant to fire — become all the more important for managing fire on the land, preserving critical habitat for wildlife, and keeping communities safe from fire.
Photo: U.S. Forest Service
Proposed protections still have room to grow
While the National Old-Growth Amendment introduces some baseline protections for old-growth trees and forests across the country, it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Beyond failing to protect mature forests, it doesn’t even guarantee safeguards for all old-growth. Instead, it gives broad latitude to local managers, who may still log mature and old-growth forests out of existence at their own discretion under the guise of “proactive stewardship.”
This type of loophole is why it remains so important for LandWatch and our partners to continue advocating for forest projects that protect wildlife habitat, support biodiversity, and combat climate change. In National Forests east of the Cascades, the Eastside Screens protect trees over 21” DBH for the time being, thanks to a legal victory by LandWatch and our partners in the spring of 2024. However, a national amendment providing a stronger set of standards for all mature and old-growth trees and forests would secure durable protections well into the future.