Forest Web

Old forests on federal lands capture and store vast amounts of carbon pollution and should be a cornerstone of U.S. climate policy.  Tell the Biden Administration it's time to let them grow.

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Call on President Biden and his administration to realize the promise of his Executive Order by creating a strong, lasting national rule that protects mature and old-growth trees and forests across federal public lands from logging.

The gray wolf species in the Northern Rockies has faced its most severe threat in a century. While an Earthjustice lawsuit recently restored protections for wolves in 44 states, due to a series of administrative and legislative maneuvers over the past decade, wolves remain unprotected in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and portions of several adjacent states. We are calling for federal Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the Northern Rockies.  

From Cascadia Wildlands:

Post-Fire Roadside Logging Should be Limited and Conservation Focused

Please join us in asking the Forest Service to keep post-fire roadside logging to a minimum and focus on only those trees that truly pose a hazard to public safety.

We are asking that site-specific decisions on whether trees pose a hazard be made by agency scientists, not logging companies with a perverse profit-driven incentive to cut as much as possible. We are also calling on the Forest Service to use larger trees that actually pose a hazard in aquatic habitat restoration nearby rather than send them to a mill.

Some of these roads provide essential access to cell phone towers, research areas and sites of cultural importance to Tribes. We do not object to the agency ensuring safe access to these important areas. However, where there are alternate routes, or where the forest experiences low burn severity, logging should not occur.

Trophy hunting and trapping. Bounty hunts. Killing wolf pups.

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Heinous acts like these are what pushed wolves to the brink of extinction. State politicians and their bureaucrats across the West have proven they aren't capable of responsible wildlife conservation.

Take action to support restoring wolf protections!

From Oregon Wild...

Trophy hunting and trapping. Bounty hunts. Killing wolf pups.

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Heinous acts like these are what pushed wolves to the brink of extinction. State politicians and their bureaucrats across the West have proven they aren't capable of responsible wildlife conservation. Take action to support restoring wolf protections!

The Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) is not what it seems. Masquerading as an educational group, the Oregon Forest Resources Institute spends their time lobbying and advertising in favor of the timber industry and covering up scientific studies that would harm the industry’s image. All this, using tax dollars. Last week’s report from Secretary of State Shemia Fagan made it clear that OFRI is misleading the public, and even breaking the law.

It’s time to hold OFRI accountable for spreading lies and prioritizing the timber industry’s bottom line over the health and sustainability of our forests.

Please ask your lawmakers to read the report and take action in the next legislative session!

Burning wood in power plants is not “carbon neutral” energy.

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It exacerbates climate change, threatens forests and the communities that depend on them, and doesn’t compete with solar and wind.

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For years, scientists have warned that burning trees to produce electricity worsens climate change, in the same way as coal and other fossil fuels. Cutting older trees reduces a forest’s overall carbon storage capacity. And per unit of energy, biomass-burning plants emit more CO2 from their smokestacks than coal.

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It takes decades for tree-burning power plants to deliver any climate benefits, and only if replanted forests fully regrow. This timescale is incompatible with the urgent need to address the climate crisis and diverts much-needed investment from real clean energy solutions.

The last giants are falling in British Columbia. Old growth forests, home to tall, ancient trees, are still being commercially logged. Now, less than 1% of forests in BC are home to stands of large, old trees.

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This issue affects communities across Canada. Healthy, old growth forests clean the air, shield us from fire and flooding, and store massive amounts of carbon. Once logged, it takes hundreds of years to recover the majority of that stored carbon. Protecting old growth forests is one of the most effective things we can do to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

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BC recently released an independent report confirming the urgent need to ban logging for the most at-risk old growth forests. But instead of taking action, the government has left the majority of these forests on the chopping block.

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These ancient forests need our protection.

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Sign the petition urging the BC government to ban logging for the most at-risk old growth forests

Please remind decision makers that plants, fish and wildlife are beloved and vital to the public. Sign the petition below to tell them to safeguard the Endangered Species Act — to protect imperiled species for the next 50 years and beyond!

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Endangered Species Act

Majestic bald eagles soar over forested mountain slopes searching for prey, while gray wolves howl a melodious song in the distance. Gentle giants of the seas, humpback whales, gather to embark on their great annual migrations encircling the Hawaiian Islands and far beyond. California condors, long gone from Oregon skies, could soon be returning, gliding on swift air currents with outreached wings. All this and more, a world teeming with unique and fascinating life could have been gone with the blink of an eye. The reality we live in now where the most iconic species still exist – and many lesser known, but still vitally important ones too– is due to the protection of the Endangered Species Act...

Stop Clearcutting, Slash Burns and Pesticide Sprays Near Drinking Water Sources on the Oregon Coast

We the undersigned Petitioners are residents, business owners, water ratepayers, visitors and admirers of the North Oregon Coast who are concerned about the water we drink and the air we breathe. This petition shows support for basic, common-sense protections of these drinking watersheds. It will be presented to city, county and state legislators and agencies in order to demonstrate widespread support for common-sense protections for the most essential human rights of access to safe and plentiful drinking water, and clean air. These are protections our communities desperately need in the face of a changing climate.

SIGN HERE

Old forests on federal lands capture and store vast amounts of carbon pollution and should be a cornerstone of U.S. climate policy.  Tell the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management it's time to let them grow.

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Sign the Letter (see below) Today!

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Dear Secretary Vilsack and Secretary Haaland,

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I am writing to urge the US Department of the Interior and US Department of Agriculture to immediately begin a rulemaking process that ensures strong, durable protections for mature and old-growth trees and forests across federal lands as a cornerstone of U.S. climate policy. Conserving our mature and old-growth trees and forests represents one of the simplest and most cost-effective climate solutions available. Implementing this rule would support a powerful natural climate solution, helping us address the unprecedented threats of climate change and biodiversity loss while also safeguarding vital sources of clean water and recreation for all Americans.

Earth Day Executive Order 14072, Strengthening the Nation's Forests, Communities, and Local Economies, and the recent Secretarial Memorandum, Climate Resilience and Carbon Stewardship of America's Forests and Grasslands, describe the indispensable value that mature and old-growth forests provide. Unfortunately, across the country on federal forests, numerous logging projects that cut mature and old-growth trees continue to move forward. Guidance issued to the Forest Service does not acknowledge the threat the agency’s own logging projects pose. Instead, the USDA guidance falsely denies the active logging of centuries-old forests and refuses to outline any meaningful steps to actually protect mature and old-growth forests.

It is unacceptable that, rather than taking steps to protect our forests and climate, the President’s Executive Order is being willfully misinterpreted to reinforce the status quo and justify more destructive logging.

The Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture must take much bolder action if the Biden administration is to truly embrace mature and old-growth forest conservation as a natural climate solution. That action must include an open, transparent public engagement process that results in meaningful, lasting regulations that endure as a climate legacy.

Ensuring strong, durable protections for mature and old-growth forests is complementary to federal agencies' efforts to meet other management objectives, including securing clean drinking water for communities in a rapidly changing climate where droughts and floods are becoming more common; improving wildfire resilience by protecting large fire-resistant trees; and enhancing access to outdoor recreation opportunities.

This is an opportunity to give permanent effect to key climate provisions in the President’s order and position the United States as an international leader in forest conservation and natural climate solutions, offering a model for other nations to follow. We cannot afford to delay.

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Sign the Letter Today!

Old forests are our best line of defense against climate change and the alarming loss of biodiversity across the country. Older, bigger trees store vast amounts of carbon, protect drinking water for communities, and provide essential habitats for at-risk species. These trees are worth more standing.

Your voice is needed! Despite international agreements to stop deforestation, the Bureau of Land Management plans to log Coast Range Forests up to 200 years old.

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This massive project would sell off over 5,000 acres of public forests that currently provide large-scale carbon storage, clean water, and habitat for Endangered Species Act listed species like the marbled murrelet, coho and Chinook salmon, and Northern spotted owl. That’s all at risk if the BLM moves forward with this insane plan.

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The forests of the Oregon Coast Range are worth more standing!

The past year has been heartbreaking for wolf lovers across the nation, as we’ve seen gray wolves stripped of their federal Endangered Species Act protections –threatening decades of progress toward recovery.

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We’re still fighting for wolves in courts and communities across the country. Now, as the Biden administration continues to prioritize restoring wildlife and wild places, we have an opportunity to call for these vulnerable wolves to be re-listed to keep the dream of wolf recovery alive!

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Help us reverse the premature delisting of gray wolves in the lower 48 states.

From Oregon Wild…

Healthy forests are one of Oregon’s best climate solutions and best lines of defense for vulnerable communities. Tell Oregon’s lawmakers to prioritize environmental justice and climate change at the Oregon Department of Forestry.

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We need a new kind of leadership at the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF). Oregon's forests store and sequester vast amounts of carbon, protect vulnerable communities from flooding and mudslides, and ensure the state has abundant clean, cool drinking water. Healthy forests are important for all Oregonians, and we need to call on our state leaders to protect and restore these incredible ecosystems in a manner that places climate change and environmental justice center stage. Unfortunately, the Oregon Department of Forestry is stuck in the past when it comes to managing our forests. Logging continues to be priorities 1, 2, and 3 for the agency. It's time to prioritize clean water, carbon storage, and an opportunity to connect communities with nature and their natural heritage.

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Please join us in calling on state legislators to fully fund multiple new climate change positions within the agency, along with three new equity-focused positions— an Environmental Justice Coordinator, Sustainability Coordinator, and Liaison to Tribal Governments Coordinator. Together, these additions to ODF would help challenge the agency's broken status quo and move it towards a new equitable future where our forests are seen as more than just board feet for logging companies.

If policymakers don’t act on climate now, no one will be safe from the worst effects of the climate crisis. We need policies that reduce carbon levels. Nothing on Earth is better at removing and storing carbon from the atmosphere than mature, standing forests. When we protect forests from industrial extraction, our forests protect us in return.

Demand your legislators take meaningful climate action to protect forests now!

The Board of Forestry is accepting public comment for the next two weeks before they make a final decision.  It is crucial that ODF pass a strong Habitat Protection Plan (HCP).  The health of forest ecosystems and the invaluable climate benefits they offer by storing large amounts of carbon depends on it.  If passed, the HCP would limit harmful clear-cutting on public state forest lands in Western Oregon. Many critical and endangered species, such as spotted owls, would gain better protections under a strong HCP.

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Industrial logging doesn’t just hurt trees and the animals who need them – it pollutes rivers and waterways too.  This pollution damages the habitats of threatened fish like salmon and pollutes vital drinking water resources. Our state needs to prioritize wildlife, water, and public forest lands over clear-cutting and timber profits.  Send the Board of Forestry a message urging them to pass the HCP.

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Use this form to submit your comments.

The Department of Interior has a major role to play in helping to stem the climate crisis and the extinction crisis. More than 3 million acres of public land in Oregon are currently identified by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as “having wilderness character,” but are not protected for those values. That includes wild places like the Owyhee Canyonlands and Greater Hart-Sheldon complex. Across the West, that figure is close to 30 million acres and includes 3.7 million acres in Utah.

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It’s crucial that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland resume designating Wilderness Study Areas in Oregon and across the West in our wildest places as an important step toward meeting the Biden administration’s goal of protecting 30 percent of public lands and waters by 2030.

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Wilderness Study Area designations are a key pathway for moving public lands closer to congressionally designated wilderness. But the BLM hasn't agreed to take this common-sense step and designate these wild landscapes as Wilderness Study Areas.

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At this critical time for our planet, we need bolder and more comprehensive action. As a leader on western public lands issues, Senator Merkley can play a key role in driving this point home.

Confronting the Climate Crisis — The Missing Piece of U.S. Climate Policy

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Conserving our remaining older forests and trees on federal public lands is one of the country’s most straightforward, impactful, and cost-effective climate solutions. This must be prioritized alongside rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We are calling on the Biden Administration to enact a strong, lasting rule that protects mature trees and forest stands from logging across federal lands as a cornerstone of US climate policy.

The older parts of our nation’s forests are climate and biodiversity champions — they sequester large amounts of carbon and can store that carbon for centuries, providing the foundation for a diversity of life. If the Administration is going to lead in solving the climate and biodiversity crises, it must protect these carbon critical climate forests and set an example for the world.

Write a letter today to President Biden, Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack, and Secretary of Department of the Interior Secretary Haaland:

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White House: comments@whitehouse.gov

USDA: agsec@usda.gov

DOI: feedback@ios.doi.gov

Talking Points

• Reducing emissions alone is an insufficient strategy for addressing the climate crisis we face today — the U.S. must also pull and sequester legacy emissions from the atmosphere.

• While there are numerous promising technologies that can help us meet this need in the future, our best near-term opportunities are natural climate solutions that enable us to store vast amounts of carbon in our forests. Conserving mature and old growth forests offers the most significant, straightforward ways to leverage this potential.

• To fully address the threat of climate change, we must transform our economy, fully decarbonize the electricity sector, and electrify the transportation sector. In comparison, protecting and recovering old growth forests is a simple, cost-effective climate solution that should have been realized decades ago.

• A climate forest policy is the “missing piece” of U.S. efforts to address the climate crisis.

• Of the human-caused global CO2 emissions since 1870, 26 percent is due to emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (Le Quéré et al. 2016 https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/8/605/2016/).

• According to the Oregon Global Warming Commission, older, mature forests have the greatest potential to sequester and store significant amounts of carbon, and to recover carbon that has been released to the atmosphere over the last 200 years. https://www.keeporegoncool.org/forest-carbon

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Sample Letter

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Dear President Biden, Secretary Vilsack, and Secretary Haaland:

Please ensure permanent protections for mature and old-growth forests on federal lands are a central component of our nation’s strategy to address the joint climate and extinction crises. Our older forests are still being logged at an alarming rate — this directly undermines the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change and protect 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030.

Taking administrative action to conserve older forests on the United States’ federal lands will represent a broad win for this Administration by mitigating and adapting to the current and future impacts of climate change, conserving habitat to counter the biodiversity crisis, and securing a wide range of co-benefits. Unfortunately, thus far the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have not produced credible proposals for combating climate change nationwide, or for conserving carbon-rich older forests and trees on the lands they manage. The administration should correct that error by protecting older forests and trees on public lands in the United States from logging.

In 2021, the Biden administration announced that it would halt large-scale old-growth logging in the Tongass National Forest. While a critical protective step, additional action is urgently needed to both expand older forest and tree protections across the United States and to ensure that the protections are enduring for the benefit of this and future generations.

We strongly urge you to take administrative action to protect older forests and trees on public lands in the United States from logging, and to ensure federal agencies work to recover these carbon rich landscapes for their climate, biodiversity, and watershed benefits to our nation.

Sincerely,

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From Cascadia Wildlands...

Late Thursday, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a kill order that could lead to the deaths of all but the breeding female of the Lookout Mountain wolf pack, including the remaining five 20 week old baby wolves. ODFW already killed two babies when they were just 14 weeks old. Wolves younger than six months do not participate in pack hunts, and therefore are not responsible for any predations on livestock.

Call Governor Kate Brown's office today at 503-378-4582 and ask her to

rescind the kill order now!

The United States is home to some of the world’s most diverse forests. Protecting these forests is as vital to solving the dual climate and environmental justice crises as transitioning to clean, renewable energy.

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Standing, living natural forests are our only hope for removing and storing enough carbon from the atmosphere at the scale necessary to help stabilize the climate and keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees. Forests also provide clean drinking water, wildlife habitat, soil productivity, fresh air, and natural flood control, helping to protect our communities from the worst climate change impacts.

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However, the US is among the world’s largest producers and consumers of wood products. Logging rates are among the highest on Earth. The scales have tipped towards looking to our forests primarily as a wood-supply store, largely ignoring their life-supporting and climate stabilizing functions.

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The reality is that massive extraction and degradation of forests occurs in the U.S. at one of the fastest rates in the world. Threats to US forests are accelerating with a recent increase in the use of wood for electricity generation, in spite of scientific warnings that substituting coal or gas with wood will accelerate climate disruption.

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For decades, forest policy in the U.S. has served to support the forest products industry, ensuring economic returns for large corporations and private landowners at the expense of healthy forests, workers, and communities. The forest products industry is driving massive carbon emissions, degrading forests, polluting the air and water, and compromising vital ecosystem services. The impacts, like so many other dirty and destructive industries, disproportionately harm low-income and communities of color.

As President Biden works to uphold his promises to address climate change and environmental justice, we must urge him to establish strong, ecologically-sound, and environmentally-just protections for our forests, as they are central to fulfilling these pledges.

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From the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast, communities are calling for a Green New Deal for forests to meet the pressing needs of mitigating the climate crisis, defending communities against its worst impacts, and advancing a just transition.

Sign the petition to President Biden: In order to ensure your robust climate action will be successful, you must include protections for forests.

Our ancient forests capture and store vast amounts of carbon pollution. Tell the US Department of Agriculture to protect our remaining old-growth.

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Our nation’s old forests, especially old growth forests in the Tongass National Forest and forests of the Pacific Northwest, are an incredibly important climate solution. These temperate rainforests rival tropical rainforests in terms of the amount of carbon they store per acre, but they are still being logged when they should be protected for carbon storage, wildlife habitat, and clean water.

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We need the US Department of Agriculture to protect our last remaining mature and old growth forests!

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When we protect our forests from logging, we both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure these forests continue to store vast amounts of carbon —a win-win climate change solution! In Oregon our intact forests also offer unique and critical habitat for at risk fish and wildlife, including the marbled murrelet, salmon, and the spotted owl. Healthy forests also filter water to keep our streams, rivers and lakes clean and cold, and these same forests protect watersheds and communities from flooding and landslides.

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Take action to call on the US Department of Agriculture to incorporate permanent protections for mature and old growth forests, especially the temperate rainforests of the Tongass and Pacific Northwest, as part of our nation’s strategy to address climate change.