Friday is the last day for the public to comment on the environmental impact statement of the draft National Old-Growth Amendment. The U.S. Forest Service is deciding how it will manage the remaining old-growth forests in the country’s 110 national forests. In the interim, the deputy chief of the National Forest System is reviewing old-growth-management projects on a case-by-case basis.
The draft amendment aims to manage and protect old-growth forests against the dangers of a changing climate. However, environmental groups are concerned that the amendment doesn’t prohibit commercial logging in old-growth forests.
“The current draft will allow old-growth logging projects on the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests and on forests across our state,” said Will Harlan, southeast director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
David Reid, national forest issues chair for the N.C. Chapter of the Sierra Club, said that the plan incentivizes the Forest Service to include areas of old-growth forest in commercial timber sales to meet timber quotas.
The definition of old-growth varies depending on the region, but for the Southern United States, old-growth forests generally consist of tree stands older than a century. Tree size and concentration of fallen trees also play a role. They are considered extremely valuable as both carbon sinks and ecosystems for native species, as an acre of old-growth forest can hold as much forest as 22 cars emit in a year.
National forests — which aren't protected the same way national parks are — face many threats linked to human activity, including climate change. The Forest Service recently released a climate-risk report, citing extreme heat, drought, wildfires, insects and disease, fire suppression, and development as threats to mature and old-growth forests.
Humans play a role in both the solution and the problem when managing older forests. As fossil fuel combustion warms the planet’s atmosphere, surface water evaporates more quickly after storms. This leads to drier conditions in between rains, and, as a result, wildfire conditions become more common. When older trees burn, they release the carbon they previously stored, further exacerbating the rise in global temperatures.
When forests aren’t actively managed with fire to reduce available fuel — like fallen leaves and branches — they can ignite and feed devastating forest fires. Regular prescribed burns can reduce detritus and promote biodiversity in the understory.
In a written response to WFAE, the Forest Service also cited “strategic thinning” as a way to reduce the risk of wildfires in older stands where the forests have become “choked with smaller trees.”
“‘Logging’ as a boogeyman shouldn’t scare people,” wrote John Winn, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service, going on to state that the Forest Service needed to continue actively managing “vulnerable forest areas” to prevent the spread of harmful insects and disease, as well as reduce wildfire risk.
“There is a romantic view that somehow mature or old trees are resilient to the chronic stress and extreme disturbances of climate change,” Winn wrote. In the American Southwest, wildfires are converting forests to shrublands in areas where fuels have accumulated.
In 2023, commercial loggers harvested trees on less than 0.2% of the agency’s forested land. However, only 1% of national forests are considered old-growth, and the agency did not specify what percentage of commercial harvests occurred in lands managed for old-growth forests.
The threat that large-scale commercial logging presents extends beyond the trees the forest loses. New roads for timber access and transport provide an avenue for disease, invasive species, and insect infestation, like the emerald ash borer, to get a foothold.
“I walked on logging roads that are just carpeted with Japanese stilt grass,” said David Clarke, a botanist at UNC Asheville who researches exotic invasive species.
“[The grass] would not have gotten in there without the road being there.”
North Carolina officials, including Charlotte City Councilmember Tiawana Brown, signed a letter to President Biden earlier this week, urging the administration to prohibit the sale of old-growth trees and tailor management plans to fit the region. Public comments on the draft amendment can be submitted here.
