Forest Web

Biden's old-growth forest executive order has giant hole

Bethany Cotton

Register-Guard  May 1,  2022

Last month, in honor of Earth Day, President Biden signed an executive order on Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies. While the EO represents progress in its acknowledgement that old-growth and mature forests are essential bulwarks against the worst impacts of climate change, its stated commitment to science-based management, and its inclusion of indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge as key to sustainable forest management, it does not — yet — actually safeguard the last of these forests here at home.  

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Amongst the substantive provision of the EO is a directive for the secretaries of agriculture and interior to “define, identify and complete an inventory of old-growth and mature forests on federal lands,” and to make it public within one year. Following the inventory, the agencies are directed to “develop policies with robust opportunity for public comment to institutionalize climate-smart management and conservation strategies that address threats to mature and old-growth forests on federal lands.”  

Protect Old Growth and Mature Forests

By Michael Garrity

Counterpunch – April 22, 2022

Today, on Earth Day, President Biden will announce a new policy to protect mature and old-growth trees which store the most carbon. Unfortunately, the president’s order will not ban logging of mature and old-growth forests or even protect the trees.  Instead, the President’s order is the latest version of a long bipartisan, Orwellian plan to subsidize the destruction of America’s national forests and the carbon sinks they contain.

Biden Won’t Stop Logging of Big Trees

Biden is clear that instead of prohibiting the logging of mature and old-growth forests, he is directing the Forest Service to study how to protect these trees.  From their past history the Forest Service’s answer will call for more logging because no matter what the problem has been, the Forest Service always says logging is the solution.

Even if Biden banned the logging of mature and old-growth trees like the Sierra Club and others have requested it wouldn’t save old-growth forests since old-growth forests are more than just big trees, they also have dead trees and young trees.  Old-growth forests are thick, multi-layered forests with horizontal cover that many species in decline such as bull trout, pine marten, spotted owls, pileated woodpeckers, lynx, and northern goshawks depended on…

The Nature Conservancy Exposed for Promoting Industrial Logging and Wood Products

Forest Web has joined with over 150 other environmental and climate justice organizations, adding our name to an open letter to Jennifer Morris, the CEO of The Nature Conservancy, to protest TNC's work with corporate polluters to promote industrial logging & wood products that harm the climate, biodiversity, & communities of color.   Forests are our best defense from the climate crisis & they need us now more than ever!  We must end the constant greenwashing by @nature_org who's promoting policies that favor the timber industry at the expense of the climate, nature & environmental justice.

Cristina Hubbard, Executive Director

Forest Web

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Dogwood Alliance – April 5, 2022

New exposé condemns The Nature Conservancy for falsely promoting industrial logging and wood products as climate solutions

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A coalition of scientists, faith and environmental justice leaders, and forest defenders has released The Nature Conspiracy, a tell-all exposé calling out The Nature Conservancy (TNC) for falsely promoting wood production and logging as climate solutions. The coalition decided to produce the exposé after The Nature Conservancy repeatedly dismissed concerns about the destruction it’s helping to cause.

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“The Nature Conservancy – the biggest, richest, and most influential environmental organization in the country – has been working with the logging and wood products industries and lobbying governments at all levels to increase logging and expand markets for wood products, often calling these efforts ‘natural climate solutions,’” said the Reverend Leo Woodberry, executive director of the New Alpha Community Development Corporation and prominent leader in the environmental justice movement…

Private Forest Accord passes Senate, clearing way for House vote

By Alex Baumhardt

Oregon Capitol Chronicle – March 2, 2022

The Private Forest Accord passed the Oregon Senate on Wednesday, making its way to a final House vote before the end of the February short session.

“I think we’re making history this morning,” Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, said before the vote.

The bill would change the way more than 10 million acres of private forests in the state are managed to protect at-risk animals and water quality in rivers and streams.

The accord, called Senate Bill 1501, passed with 22 Democrats and four Republicans in favor. Five Republicans opposed.

The accord would dramatically change logging rules for private forests established in the Forest Practices Act, 50-year-old regulations dictating various rules, including how close logging can occur to rivers and streams and the use of pesticides.

The Private Forest Accord directs the state Board of Forestry to update the Forest Practices Act, requiring larger unlogged zones around rivers to protect fish habitat and ending commercial beaver trapping and the lethal removal of beavers on private forestland. It calls for improving roads in private forests and sets up stricter logging standards on slopes, which can cause landslides that send harmful debris into rivers…

Judge restores protections for gray wolves across much of US

A judge has restored federal protections for gray wolves across much of the U.S. after they were removed in the waning days of the Trump administration

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By Matthew Brown and John Flesher

ABC News- February 10, 2022

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A judge restored federal protections for gray wolves across much of the U.S. on Thursday after they were removed in the waning days of the Trump administration.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to show wolf populations could be sustained in the Midwest and portions of the West without protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Wildlife advocates had argued state-sponsored hunting threatened to reverse the gray wolf’s recovery over the past several decades.

The ruling does not directly impact wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and portions of several adjacent states that remain under state jurisdiction…

As animals vanish, the plants they spread can’t keep pace with climate change

By Liz Kimbrough

Mongabay – January 19, 2022

Animals that eat fruit and spread the seeds in their droppings offer an all-inclusive transportation service for half the world’s flora. But as more seed-dispersing birds and mammals die off globally, some of these plant species will lose their ability to shift their locations to keep pace with escalating climate change, says new research.

“When you hear the headlines about the biodiversity crisis, some call it the sixth mass extinction, that decline of birds and mammals also means the decline of seed dispersers,” Evan Fricke, lead author of the new study, recently published in Science, told Mongabay.

Fricke and colleagues reported that the loss of birds and mammals has reduced the ability of animal-dispersed plants to track climate change by 60%.

This number “is somewhere in the alarm bell territory,” Fricke told Mongabay. “I hope [this finding] focuses people’s attention on the importance of seed-disperser biodiversity for plant adaptation to climate change…”

DeFazio 'disappointed' Interior secretary won't give gray wolf emergency protections

KMTR – January 19, 2022

EUGENE, Ore. – Rep. Peter DeFazio said he was "disappointed" after talking to the Biden Adminstiration's Interior Secretary Deb Haaland about emergency reinstatement of Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf.

“Secretary Haaland has the power to immediately relist the gray wolf using emergency authority, and I strongly urged her to take this action," said the Democrat from Springfield, who is not seeking re-election this year. "I am disappointed she has chosen to delay this vital action to stop the slaughter."

DeFazio and other lawmakers have argued wolf recovery has been endangered by the lifting of protections under the Trump administration - and the current administration's failure to restore those protections.

“While I appreciate that Secretary Haaland took the time today to discuss the survival of the gray wolf, I came away from the discussion disappointed," DeFazio said in a statement Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022…

The Old Man and the Tree

Ecologists thought America’s primeval forests were gone. Then Bob Leverett proved them wrong and discovered a powerful new tool against climate change

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By Jonny Diamond

Smithsonian Magazine – January 2022

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I meet Bob Leverett in a small gravel parking lot at the end of a quiet residential road in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. We are at the Ice Glen trailhead, half a mile from a Mobil station, and Leverett, along with his wife, Monica Jakuc Leverett, is going to show me one of New England’s rare pockets of old-growth forest.

For most of the 20th century, it was a matter of settled wisdom that the ancient forests of New England had long ago fallen to the ax and saw. How, after all, could such old trees have survived the settlers’ endless need for fuel to burn, fields to farm and timber to build with? Indeed, ramping up at the end of the 17th century, the colonial frontier subsisted on its logging operations stretching from Maine to the Carolinas. But the loggers and settlers missed a few spots over 300 years, which is why we’re at Ice Glen on this hot, humid August day.

To enter a forest with Bob Leverett is to submit to a convivial narration of the natural world, defined as much by its tangents as its destinations—by its opportunities for noticing. At 80, Leverett remains nimble, powered by a seemingly endless enthusiasm for sharing his experience of the woods with newcomers like me. Born and raised in mountain towns in the Southern Appalachians, in a house straddling the state line between Georgia and Tennessee, Leverett served for 12 years as an Air Force engineer, with stints in the Dakotas, Taiwan and the Pentagon, but he hasn’t lost any of his amiable Appalachian twang. And though he’s lived the majority of his life in New England, where he worked as an engineering head of a management consulting firm and software developer until he retired in 2007, he comes across like something between an old Southern senator and an itinerant preacher, ready to filibuster or sermonize at a moment’s notice. Invariably, the topic of these sermons is the importance of old-growth forest, not only for its serene effect on the human soul or for its biodiversity, but for its vital role in mitigating climate change…

Oregon scientists call for more forest protection to fight climate change, save species

By Cassandra Profita

OPB – 12-14-2021

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Oregon State University researchers outline a plan for creating ‘Strategic Forest Reserves’ across the Western U.S.

Researchers with Oregon State University say the U.S. needs to establish new “Strategic Forest Reserves” to protect wildlife and reduce the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.

A new study maps the Western forests that would store the most carbon and help the most species if they were given the same level of protection from logging, grazing and mining as designated wilderness areas receive.

Researchers analyzed which forests are currently protected in 11 states and which ones should be prioritized for protection in the future, outlining a plan for creating Strategic Forest Reserves across the region…

Timber groups can't intervene in red tree vole lawsuit

By Mateusz Perkowski

Capital Press - November 23, 2021

Timber groups can’t intervene in Endangered Species Act litigation over red tree voles because a federal judge said they lack a “significantly protectable interest” in the case.

In 2019, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined it’s not warranted to list the red tree vole as threatened or endangered, which would have provided protections for the species and its habitat in Northwest Oregon.

The Center for Biological Diversity and several other environmental nonprofits challenged the decision, arguing the rodents are in danger of extinction from habitat loss caused by logging and other factors.

Judge halts post-fire roadside logging on Oregon’s Willamette National Forest

By Bradley W. Parks (OPB)

Bend, Ore. Nov. 5, 2021

A federal judge has ordered an immediate stop to a U.S. Forest Service plan to log along more than 400 miles of roads within the Willamette National Forest.

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U.S. District Judge Michael McShane said in an order issued Friday that the federal agency overstretched its authority under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, to effectively log some 20,000 acres of forestland in the name of post-fire road repair.

A rewilding triumph: wolves help to reverse Yellowstone degradation

By Cassidy Randall

Sat 25 Jan 2020 06.00 EST

Twenty-five years ago, the national park attempted to reintroduce wolves – now scientists are celebrating it as one of the greatest rewilding stories ever

Supported by

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Twenty-five years ago this month, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, America’s first national park and an ecosystem dangerously out of whack owing to the extirpation of its top predator.

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This monumental undertaking marked the first deliberate attempt to return a top-level carnivore to a large ecosystem. Now scientists are celebrating the gray wolves’ successful return from the brink of extinction as one of the greatest rewilding stories the world has ever seen.

Judge halts Southern Oregon logging project

By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press

Oct 5, 2021 Updated Oct 5, 2021

A federal judge has halted a 900-acre logging project in Southern Oregon because its impact on great gray owls wasn’t properly evaluated.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled the U.S.

Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the Griffin Half Moon project was “arbitrary and capricious,” which means logging cannot proceed until the plan is revised.

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Aiken has adopted a federal magistrate’s recommendation to block the project for violating the National Environmental Policy Act, dismissing the BLM’s objections that the case was analyzed under the wrong legal standards...

Oregon OKs killing most wolves in Baker County pack, including half of breeding pair, after attacks

By Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald

OregonLive - September 17, 2021

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has authorized killing most wolves from the Lookout Mountain pack, including its breeding male.

But the agency does not plan to target the breeding female from the pack in eastern Baker County, which has killed six head of cattle since mid-July and injured two others, including a six-month-old calf killed late last week.

The permit allows ranchers to kill up to two wolves, not including the breeding pair, before Oct. 31. The permit applies to four ranchers who have lost cattle to wolves, and allows any of them to kill wolves on land they either own or legally use for grazing…

Edge of Existence

As climate change and habitat loss push wildlife to the brink, the time to protect biodiversity is now.

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By Ben Goldfarb

The Nature Conservancy - August 27, 2021

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In 1999, a strange virus began to afflict pig farmers in Malaysia. Patients suffered headaches, fevers and brain inflammation; ultimately more than 100 Malaysians died. Named the Nipah virus for the village where it was first identified, the pathogen is carried by fruit bats, which had been driven from their natural habitat by deforestation and fire and were foraging in orchards surrounding pig farms. It is believed that the bats were transmitting the virus to pigs, which passed it to humans. Nature’s deterioration, it seems, had spawned a public health crisis.

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The Nipah virus spillover provided evidence of a profound truth: Our fate is inextricably linked to the biodiversity that surrounds us. Insects pollinate our crops; oceans feed us; forests provide us with shelter. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the fact that when nature suffers, human well-being follows suit—loss of habitat and more contact with wildlife increases the risk of transmitting zoonotic viruses to humans. “Healthy waters, healthy lands, healthy people—all are part of a cohesive and integrated whole,” says Lynn Scarlett, chief external affairs officer for The Nature Conservancy.

To keep that whole intact, delegates from nearly 200 countries will convene for the next meeting of the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity, which will set global priorities for safeguarding habitats, saving species and protecting the ecological services that sustain human communities. Although a date for the convention is uncertain due to global travel restrictions at the time of publication, its mission couldn’t be more urgent. Since the late 19th century, the world has lost approximately half of its coral reefs, and other critical ecosystems, like wetlands and tropical forests, are shrinking fast. Around 1 million species are threatened today with extinction. “The arc of conservation is at a pivot point,” Scarlett says…

Hopping into the wild: Endangered frog release could help boost only known population in Washington

By Courtney Flatt

OPB – August 17, 2021

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Hundreds of endangered northern leopard frogs have hopped into the only wild place these frogs are found in Washington.

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The release recently was an effort to help boost this genetically important population. The frogs are bellwethers for ecosystem health.

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These tiny frogs first hatched at the Oregon Zoo and Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in Washington’s Pierce County. Now that they’ve grown to roughly six centimeters long, the frogs are ready to join the state’s only known population at Central Washington’s Columbia National Wildlife Refuge.

IPCC: We’ve Already Warmed the Planet to Catastrophic Effect, but the Level of That Catastrophe Is Up to Us

There’s no going back, but there is a way forward: Act now and go big.

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By Jeff Turrentine

NRDC – August 9, 2021

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Early this morning, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first portion of its Sixth Assessment Report on how climate change is altering the planet’s natural systems and worsening extreme weather events around the world. The news, you won’t be surprised to hear, is not good.

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Here are just some of the takeaways made by the authors with “high confidence”—which is IPCC-speak for near-certitude. In 2019, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were higher than at any time in at least two million years. The earth’s average surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2,000 years. Between 2011 and 2020, the annual average area of sea ice coverage in the Arctic reached its lowest level since at least 1850. And the global average sea level has risen faster since 1900 than over any preceding century in at least the last 3,000 years…

Earth Overshoot Day 2021: Why the date has been moved back to 29 July as emissions ramp up amid Covid recovery

By Emma Snaith

Independent – July 28, 2021

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Humans will have already consumed all the natural resources that Earth can sustainably supply for 2021 by tomorrow — overshooting by five months.

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This year’s “Earth Overshoot Day” lands on the 29 July, after being moved forward temporarily in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

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From this point until the end of the year, the global economy is operating in “ecological deficit”, campaigners say. Humanity currently uses 74 per cent more resources than what the planet’s ecosystems can regenerate each year — or 1.7 Earths….

Biden proposes restoration of northern spotted owl habitat, reversing late Trump rule

By Zack Budryk

The Hill – July 20, 2021

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The Biden administration is proposing to restore protections for millions of forests home to the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest, the latest reversal of environmental protections undone by the Trump administration.

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In a Federal Register notice Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined there was “insufficient rationale and justification” behind the Trump-era removal of protections. The affected 3.4 million acres stretched across nearly 45 counties in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.

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The agency said it would instead curtail protections on about 200,000 acres in Oregon, following up on a 2020 proposal…

The ‘ecological hate speech’ developed around wildfire

By Carson Vaughn

High Country News – June 29, 2021

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California experienced more wildfire last year than any previous year on record, but the severe drought currently strangling nearly three-quarters of the American West threatens to make the 2021 fire season even worse. And while many state and federal agencies are taking extraordinary measures to prevent the further loss of life and property — including prescribed burns, thinning and the deployment of the largest firefighting force in California’s history — some question the efficacy of these increasingly costly measures.

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In Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate, published last month by the University Press of Kentucky, author Chad Hanson suggests that wildfire behavior is driven primarily by weather and climate. “Extreme weather — hot, dry, windy conditions — will drive wildland fires until the weather changes. Under such conditions, which are becoming more common due to climate change, no matter how many billions of dollars we spend to try to manage vegetation in remote areas, we cannot stop or curb fires,” he writes.

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“Nor can fires be stopped by fire suppression tactics during extreme weather, regardless of how much money is spent or how many firefighters and water tankers are employed. In the era of climate change, we can no more stop weather-driven fires than we can stand on a ridge and fight the wind,” he adds…

Protecting Cascadia’s forests is our greatest climate solution

By Rebecca White

Register Guard – June 26, 2021

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Let’s talk “proforestation.”

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Coined by scientist William Moomaw, this term describes letting older forests do their natural thing, growing and sequestering carbon while nurturing a deep network of wild lives. Proforestation means leaving forests alone if they are already mature and letting younger forests survive to become old-growth. 

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Proforestation does not sideline other forestry terms: Reforestation refers to either natural regeneration or to planting trees in formerly forested areas, and afforestation means planting trees in areas not historically forested. By contrast, proforestation recognizes the contributions of young trees are mostly decades in the future, and that greater carbon sequestration — and intact habitat — is necessary now as we face the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.

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Our Cascadian forests are among the world’s most powerful natural climate solutions, able to store more carbon than almost any other ecosystem. We should permanently protect our remaining mature and old-growth forests as part of a national strategic carbon reserve. Forest protection is not a substitute for, but must occur along with, an end to burning fossil fuels…

Wildlife corridor from Yellowstone to Yukon shows promise, includes swath of Oregon

By Charles C. Chester, Brandeis University, and Mark Hebblewhite, University of Montana

The Oregonian - April 28, 2022

As human development spreads ever farther around the world, very few large ecosystems remain relatively intact and uninterrupted by highways, cities or other human-constructed obstacles. One of the largest exceptions is the Yellowstone to Yukon region, or Y2Y, which stretches more than 2,000 miles northwest from Wyoming, across northeastern Oregon, and up into Canada’s Yukon territory.

For the past 30 years conservationists have worked to knit this huge stretch of land together under the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. Y2Y seeks to make room for wildlife in connected landscapes that give animals the ability to move across large areas – whether they are following age-old migration patterns or responding to a changing climate.

Throughout this huge region, hundreds of partners – conservation groups, private landowners, businesses, government agencies, tribes and scientists – have worked to knit landscapes together and make it possible for animals to move across it. Participants have constructed wildlife road crossings, conducted “bear aware” campaigns to reduce clashes between people and animals, placed conservation easements on private lands and supported Indigenous efforts to protect sacred spaces…

Biden will order a study of old-growth forests in an Earth Day executive action

By Laura Benshoff

NPR - April 22, 2022

President Biden will sign an executive order to inventory and protect old-growth forests while visiting Seattle later Friday.

The order requires the Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture to come up with a shared definition of mature and old-growth forests and gives them a year to take stock of their numbers in the U.S. After collecting that data, the agencies must come up with new policies to manage and conserve these wooded areas, with an eye towards threats like wildfires.

The carbon stored by forests, harvested wood products, and urban trees offsets around 14% of carbon released each year in the U.S., according to a 2020 Forest Service report. Older, wider trees tend to store more carbon, although there is some scientific debate over how much carbon they continue to take out of the atmosphere as they age…

Federal agencies must press ahead with climate-saving choices for mature forests

Science has made clear the value of public forests in capturing carbon, helping the environment

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By Lauren Anderson

Oregon Capital Chronicle – March 7, 2022

Oregon has had to contend with some serious climate impacts in recent years, from life threatening heat waves to ice storms that left thousands without power for days.

Persistent drought, wildfires, and changing precipitation patterns have also placed our most vulnerable communities at risk. Given how dire the situation is becoming, it is critical that we use every tool in the toolbox to prevent future climate impacts from becoming worse.

While Oregon has made real progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, emissions reductions alone are not enough. We must also pull a significant amount carbon dioxide from of the atmosphere and there is currently no technology that can do this at the scale that is needed. Luckily, our oldest, simplest, and most-cost effective climate solutions – forests – have yet to be fully utilized to combat climate change.

The Elliott’s Potentially Peaceful Future

New bill would decouple the Elliott State Forest from the Common School Fund and create new research forest

By Clayton Franke

Eugene Weekly – February 24, 2022

Francis Eatherington’s iPad slides across the dash of her Subaru as she swings the car onto the 7700 road in the Elliott State Forest. The tablet is full of downloadable maps of past timber sales, some she stopped, some she didn’t. Cobwebs in the corner of the dash light up as sunlight beams through the windshield. She stops the car in the middle of the road and pulls out a paper map littered with swatches of blue, pink and yellow and a web of logging roads.

“It’s kind of like a plate of spaghetti,” she says of the map.

The graveled forest roads weave through the Elliott — 82,000 acres of clearcuts, timber plantations and native old growth forests just south of the Siuslaw National Forest in Oregon’s Coast Range. Eatherington, the former conservation director at Cascadia Wildlands, knows the roads well from her work fighting old growth timber harvests and protecting endangered species habitat.

The Elliott has been one of the battlegrounds for Oregon’s “timber wars,” with decades of conflict surrounding forest ownership and timber harvest revenue. But a new bill in the Oregon Legislature could resolve the conflict and pave the way for other agreements between historically disparate groups…

How Beavers Boost Stream Flows

After seeing how beavers helped Birch Creek flow again, Idaho rancher Jay Wilde has inspired hundreds of people to try beaver-assisted stream restoration.

By Brianna Randall  

The National Wildlife Federation Blog – January 8, 2022

Thirteen years ago, Idaho rancher Jay Wilde sat in his kitchen sipping coffee before dawn. As the caffeine kicked in, he was once again pondering why the stream running through his ranch had stopped flowing.

It suddenly hit him: “Beavers! That’s what’s missing.”

When Wilde was growing up on the ranch, Birch Creek had flowed year-round. He used to spend summers fishing for trout and swimming in the ponds created by beaver dams. But Wilde hadn’t seen beavers or their dams since 1995, when he moved back to take over the ranch from his parents.

“I began researching the role of beaver, and learned that for a watershed to be healthy, there needs to be beavers there,” says Wilde.

Beavers are some of nature’s best engineers. They gnaw down trees to create intricate dams and lodges as their shelter. In turn, their dams act to slow the flow of a stream, creating ponds that act like a piggy-bank that stores water for the ecosystem…

Grizzlies in the Cascades? Lawsuit seeks to reverse shutdown of bear recovery program

In 2020 the Department of the Interior kiboshed a long-running grizzly restoration study. Its authors and supporters still want answers

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By Jordan Rane

Columbia Insight – January 13, 2022

In 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee—a cross-agency organization spearheading conservation of the threatened species in six designated wilderness areas across the Northwest—launched a program aimed at studying the possible restoration of grizzlies in one of their most decimated yet still viable habitats in North America: Washington’s North Cascades.

The Grizzly Bear Restoration Plan for the North Cascades Ecosystem—which began with a multi-year environmental impact study—was more or less unprecedented. Its intent was to study the feasibility of transplanting the iconic bear into a vast wildland situated between farms, ranches, rural communities and large coastal cities.

In 2020, however, the expansive study was suddenly and unexpectedly terminated by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Aside from citing local opposition to the federal program, then Interior Secretary David Bernhardt provided no concrete explanation for the decision to end the program…

The Uncivil War on Wolves Must End

Wolves once again need federal protection

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By Stephen Capra

Changing America – January 13, 2022

Last year, the nation witnessed an attack on our nation’s capital, it is etched in our mind for the shock that is was, American citizens attacking a sacred place and stealing and bringing harm to the capitol police. It was a low point for our democracy. Such low points are spreading across our country, no place is this clearer than the boundaries of our nation’s most sacred National Park — Yellowstone. For it is here, that wolves have become another part of our country’s tribal divide.

If you are going to visit Yellowstone, perhaps one of the most important reasons is to see wolves in the wild. People come from across the globe spending large amounts of money for the chance to see them. On any given day Lamar Valley will host long lines of cars and people staring across the landscape looking for movement and a chance to see Canis lupus in the wild.

Yet over the past year, the governor of our state, a trapper and avid predator killer, Greg Gianforte, has made clear he does not care about tourism, he does not care that wolves bring much needed economic relief to our state (numbers show close to 60 million a year), instead he has led the way by killing a collared wolf Max last spring on the border of Yellowstone. Long known for his bully tendencies, Gianforte seems all too impressed with trappers and longs to satisfy their every need. Using his newly appointed Game Commission he removed protections from the borders of Yellowstone, which has resulted this year in the killing of more wolves than any year since their reintroduction, more than 20 as of last count. The entire Phantom Lake pack of 13 has been destroyed by hunters…

Infrastructure spending should not facilitate sawing down our National Forests

By Carole King, Opinion Contributor

The Hill – January 11, 2022

The already-enacted bipartisan infrastructure bill allocated billions of dollars to facilitate logging in our national forests, with scant public awareness of those provisions. The House-passed Build Back Better bill contains similar sections.

Over 200 U.S. climate scientists and ecologists oppose those logging provisions.

As negotiations resume, lawmakers could achieve compromise by excluding sections providing billions more for “restoration,” “fuel reduction,” “forest health,” and other euphemisms for commercial logging.

Removing those provisions would free up money to extend the child tax credit, which families have been putting back into the economy through buying food, gas, toilet paper, medicines, and shoes for growing children, among other necessities.

But the cost of logging on public land is not just money. Logging releases more than 723 million tons of carbon a year, which accelerates climate change and destroys wildlife habitat, which hastens the extinction of species….

Judge halts logging on wildfire-scarred forest in Oregon

By AP Staff

OPB – December 5, 2021

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A federal judge has halted U.S. Forest Service plans to log part of the Willamette National Forest burned by last summer’s wildfires after a lawsuit filed by environmentalists.

The ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken comes after Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild sued to stop the logging near Breitenbush Hot Springs and Detroit Lake, the Statesman Journal reported.

The groups allege the Forest Service modified logging contracts — which were focused on thinning green trees and doing prescribed burns — to include logging fire-charred trees without going through the proper environmental review process.

Opinion: To achieve Glasgow's climate goals, end old-growth logging at home

By Rebecca White

Register Guard – November 27, 2021

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After two weeks of often tense negotiations, the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow have concluded. What remains is to make sense of the commitments the United States, and the international community, made to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

The short answer: not enough. Climate plans submitted by 151 nations would limit warming to 2.5 degrees Celsius. But to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists predict we must keep warming to under 1.5 degrees, which requires cutting worldwide carbon emissions in half by the end of this decade.

That’s a tall order.

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Nations will gather again in 2022 to submit stronger emissions-reduction targets. In the meantime, the major emitters, including the U.S., must ramp up fossil fuel emissions cuts. Additional measures require signatories to curb the potent greenhouse gas methane, as well as phase out fossil fuel subsidies and "phase down" coal use…

Groups tell Biden administration: Don’t forget the forests

Letter from environmental organizations urges president to include older and mature trees in his climate plans

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For Immediate Release

Thursday, October 28, 2021

WASHINGTON -- As the Biden administration prepares to attend the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, 128 environmental groups delivered a letter to the White House asking that the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management stop the logging of older forests and trees on public lands. The correspondence specifically asks for this commitment to be part of the United States’ larger climate goals.

Link between native forest logging and bushfires prompts calls for rethink of forest management

By Alexandra Humphries

ABC News - October 5, 2021

There is growing pressure on the Tasmanian government to rethink its native forest management practices, after new University of Tasmania research found regenerating forests are more prone to high-severity bushfires than mature forests.

The study focused on Tasmanian eucalyptus forest, aiming to assess how fire danger changes as forests mature, to help predict bushfire behaviour.

Wildfire ecologist James Furlaud said the study found fire risk in older forests was much lower than in young forests, and clear-felling — the practice of removing all trees from a coupe — could increase fire risk.

Opinion: Oregonians are too smart to buy Big Timber’s climate greenwashing

By Rebecca White

The Register Guard – September 25, 2021

I recently steeled myself to take a good look at the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Prepared by hundreds of volunteer scientists from around the world, its findings are dire.

Our world is on track to exceed Paris Agreement limits, ensuring a rising toll on human life and wildlife. We still have time to act, but the hour is late, and we can no longer take part in such pointless activities as debating and deflecting polluter misinformation campaigns. Many of the worst predictions of earlier IPCC reports have already occurred in the Pacific Northwest. Unprecedented wildfire, drought and heatwaves this year alone have transformed climate change from an academic issue to one with devastatingly direct impacts…

A legal pillar of environmental justice is now under attack

By James Goodwin and Rob Verchick

The Hill – Sept. 1, 2021

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A legal pillar of environmental justice is now under attack

A few weeks ago, the Army Corps of Engineers made a startling announcement: It would give Sharon Lavigne and her neighbors in St. James Parish, La., a chance to tell their stories. The fact one of the world’s largest chemical companies has fought for years to keep Lavigne quiet tells you how commanding her stories are. Those stories may stop this particular company from building a multi-billion dollar chemical plant surrounding her neighborhood.

For this, we can thank a simple law, signed by President Nixon in 1970, called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Unlike other environmental laws, NEPA doesn’t tell agencies what choices they must make — like where to erect a levee or whether to permit a plastics plant. But it does insist their choices be informed. So, before the Army Corps can approve a company’s wetlands development permit it has to study whatever effects that chemical plant might have on the health of people in that community and on the properties they own.

One critical way that agencies like the Army Corp learn about such effects is by giving people — particularly local residents a chance to share their concerns in their own words. You don’t need a degree in law or chemistry to have a say, although sometimes it takes a dose of courage. It’s not easy to speak or write publicly about having to cook with tainted tap water, visiting with neighbors on a foul-smelling porch, or dreading some rare cancer that’s been associated with your zip code. As far as NEPA is concerned, those stories are just as important as ones that global chemical companies have to tell…

Logging in disguise: How forest thinning is making wildfires worse

The U.S. Forest Service clears trees from public lands in the name of fire prevention, but it doesn’t work. There are better strategies to protect communities, but don’t expect to hear about them from the logging industry.

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By Chad Hanson

Fix Solutions Labs – August 24, 2021

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Earlier this month, the Dixie Fire leveled most of the town of Greenville, California. I know the town well — I conducted fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation there. Thankfully, everyone survived. But the downtown is gone, along with 75 percent of the homes.

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It didn’t need to happen.

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Fire has always been a concern for communities like Greenville in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains. And, for decades, the U.S. Forest Service and the timber industry told the townspeople that logging tens of thousands of acres — under the guise of “thinning” — would create “fuel breaks” to slow or even stop wildfires and prevent flames from reaching Main Street…

Old-Growth Defenders Have a Formidable Ally in Suzanne Simard

By Sid Tafler

The Tyee – August 11, 2021

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Suzanne Simard grew up in a province home to ancient forests. Now 60, she laments that B.C. has become a province of clearcuts, with only remnants of old growth left.

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On Sunday, she flew by helicopter from Port Renfrew on southern Vancouver Island to the disputed Fairy Creek area, diverting north to pass over Caycuse, an old-growth watershed recently clear cut after forest protectors were evicted by the RCMP.

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“The clear cutting is disgraceful,” she told The Tyee Monday as she sat by the windows of a friend’s waterfront home in Saanich. “It looks like a war zone.” Whole hillsides have been scalped and once majestic ancient trees reduced to gaping stumps…

Key takeaways from the new IPCC report

Higher confidence, compounded extremes – and high seas that will persist for millennia.

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By Bob Henson

Yale Climate Connections – August 9, 2021

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A hellish northern summer laced with deadly heat waves, perilous floods, and massive wildfires may be just a preview of coming attractions, according to a blockbuster new assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The assessment lays out how the planet’s air, oceans, and ice are pushing relentlessly into new territory.

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Eight years of research from more than 14,000 papers have been telescoped into the exhaustive new report, part of the sixth comprehensive assessment in the IPCC’s 33-year history.

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The report finds that Earth is on the doorstep of the much-discussed 1.5°C threshold, more likely than not to be reached by 2040. The hazards of compound impacts – such as heat and drought together ­– have risen to new prominence since the last assessment, and the risks of cataclysmic tipping points continue to loom.

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“Unless there are immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5°C will be beyond reach,” said Ko Barrett, senior advisor for climate for NOAA’s Office of Atmospheric Research and one of three IPCC vice-chairs, in a press briefing on Sunday, August 8…

The Bootleg Fire grew fast. Did forest management play a role?

By Erik Neumann

OPB – July 25, 2021

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Since it started on July 6, 2021, the Bootleg Fire has been characterized by its size and speed. Miles of forest land has burned each day. At over 400,000 acres, it’s Oregon’s third largest wildfire since 1900. In recent weeks firefighters have had to retreat multiple times as embers crossed containment lines and hot, dry and windy weather made fighting the fire impossible.

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The footprint of the Bootleg Fire includes a history of commercial logging, thinning, clear cutting, prescribed fire and other intensive management practices, according to Bryant Baker, conservation director of Santa Barbara, California, nonprofit Los Padres ForestWatch. Baker says those management activities contributed to the fire’s spread. One example, he says, is when it burned into the U.S. Forest Service’s Black Hills Ecosystem Restoration Project.

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“Essentially the fire burned through these areas really quickly,” Bryant says. “So, the fire in its initial rapid growth burned right through these pretty expansive areas of commercial thinning and prescribed fire and did not seem to slow down…”

Oregon Approves Petition to Increase Marbled Murrelet Endangered Species Protection

For Immediate Release, July 9, 2021

SALEM, Ore.— The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission today approved a petition filed by five conservation groups to give marbled murrelets more protection by reclassifying them from threatened to endangered under the state’s Endangered Species Act. The 4-3 decision comes two years after an Oregon judge ruled that the commission had violated state law by denying the petition without explanation in 2018.

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“We’re relieved that after so many missteps, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will finally move forward with extending marbled murrelets the full protection of endangered status under state law,” said Quinn Read, Oregon policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These unique birds face serious threats in Oregon from climate change, ocean warming, wildfire, and unchecked logging of their nesting habitat and should have been protected as endangered years ago.”

Oregon lawmakers set out to increase the timber industry’s tax bill. Instead, they cut it again

By Tony Schick

OPB – June 29, 2021

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Oregon lawmakers pledged to increase taxes on the timber industry and rein in its influence during this year’s legislative session. Instead, they handed the companies an unexpected gift — another tax break.

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As the session wrapped last week, lawmakers gutted the remaining $15 million annual harvest tax paid by timber companies for cutting down trees. The move eliminated about $9 million in annual revenue that helps fund Oregon State University’s forestry research and the Department of Forestry’s enforcement of state logging laws. Money for the programs will temporarily come from the state’s general fund, forcing the costs onto taxpayers…

Oregon Court of Appeals overturns $1.1 billion verdict against state over management of forests

By Ted Sickinger| The Oregonian/OregonLiv

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The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday erased a $1.1 billion verdict against the state over its management of state forests, determining the Department of Forestry and its policy-setting board are not obligated to maximize timber harvests and associated payments to counties where the forests are located.

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The state appealed the verdict on 28 alleged legal errors before and during a 2019 trial in Linn County, but the appeals court based its decision on just one. Its ruling said that specific language in the Forest Acquisition Act of 1941 did not constitute a contract between the state and the counties to maximize revenues from timber harvests. The trial court, it said, erred by failing to grant the state’s original motion to dismiss the lawsuit on that basis.

In-depth Q&A: The IPCC’s sixth assessment on how to tackle climate change

IPCC – April 5, 2022

Limiting global warming to 1.5C or 2C would mean “rapid and deep” emissions reductions in “all sectors” of the global economy, says the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Instead, emissions have continued to rise – albeit at a slowing rate – and it will be “impossible” to stay below 1.5C with “no or limited overshoot” without stronger climate action this decade, says the new document, which forms part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6).

It outlines how these emissions cuts could be achieved, including “substantial” reductions in fossil fuel use, energy efficiency, electrification, the rapid uptake of low-emission energy sources – particularly renewables – and the use of alternative energy carriers, such as hydrogen…

Legislature preserves Elliott State Forest for research, public use

By Rachel McDonald

KLCC – March 4, 2022

This week, Oregon lawmakers approved a bill that establishes the Elliott State Research Forest on more than 82,000 acres in the coast range near Coos Bay.

The Elliott is a unique tract of coastal forest originally meant to generate logging revenue for Oregon’s K-12 schools. Conservation groups and others long worked to halt that practice and keep the forest intact.

Josh Laughlin, Executive Director of Cascadia Wildlands in Eugene said Senate Bill 1546 preserves the forest for education and research

“Which will have these incredible benefits for clean water and carbon storage and habitat for imperiled species,” he said. “But most important it delinks school funding from clear cutting old growth forests. That was the goal that we set out to achieve about 20 years ago...”

OSU research suggests Forest Service lands not the main source of wildfires affecting communities

By Steve Lundeberg

Oregon State University - February 15, 2022

Research led by Oregon State University shows that fires are more likely to burn their way into national forests than out of them.

The findings contradict the common narrative of a destructive wildfire igniting on remote public land before spreading to threaten communities, said Chris Dunn of the OSU College of Forestry.

The study, which looked at more than 22,000 fires, found that those crossing jurisdictional boundaries are primarily caused by people on private property.

It also showed that ignitions on Forest Service lands accounted for fewer than 25% of the most destructive wildfires – ones that resulted in the loss of more than 50 structures.

The Silent E: The Extinction of Experience and Empathy

The loss of biodiversity around the planet comes with very human costs, I tell the hosts of The Silent Why podcast.

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By John R. Platt

The Revelator - January 24, 2022

What do we lose when we lose species? And how can we turn grief into action?

As I discuss on a recent episode of The Silent Why — a podcast exploring 101 different types of grief and loss — the extinction crisis affecting this planet sometimes feels overwhelming. It can fill us with dread while it robs the world of wonder, culture and connections. Extinction leaves the world a little less amazing, and we’re all a little poorer and sadder for it.

But sometimes that grief can also drive us, deepen our capacity for empathy, renew our commitment to do better, and encourage us to celebrate life while it still exists. That’s something we can all share when we experience loss, whether it’s the death of a parent or the solastalgia we feel from the decline of nature…

Yelling Timber

By Jasmine Lewin

Ethos – January 10, 2022

Former firefighter and fire ecologist Tim Ingalsbee positions himself in front of his computer webcam, surrounded by textbooks, Smokey the Bear posters and a large banner with the acronym “FUSEE” printed in bold letters.

He’s getting ready to begin a virtual news conference about logging practices and firefighting strategies, specifically in the context of the West Coast’s recent history of severe and widespread wildfires. The 2020 Oregon wildfire season was one of the most destructive on record in the state, with a catastrophic outcome that killed at least 11 people, destroyed thousands of homes and burned more than 1 million acres of land.

As climate change causes dryer and hotter weather in Cascadia forests, wildfires are only predicted to get more severe in damage and frequency; climate and fire experts working with Oregon State University concluded that Oregon’s recent wildfires are a precursor to what the region will see in the future as the climate warms. Due to the intensification in damage and frequency of these natural disasters, traditional suppressive wildfire prevention methods are being questioned in favor of other, more environmentally friendly strategies.

Forest Service scraps post-fire logging plan in Willamette National Forest

By Bradley W. Parks

OPB – January 14, 2022

The U.S. Forest Service has abandoned a plan to log along more than 400 miles of roads in burnt areas of the Willamette National Forest.

In a written statement issued Wednesday, Willamette National Forest supervisor Dave Warnack said mounting legal costs influenced his decision to withdraw the plan.

“Our work to safely restore public access to areas burned in the 2020 Labor Day fires continues to be top priority,” Warnack said. “Upon withdrawal of this decision, my staff will conduct another review of the purpose and need of this project and will consider a new approach to addressing this important issue.”

The federal agency crafted the plan following the Beachie Creek, Lionshead and Holiday Farm fires of 2020, saying roadside trees killed or injured in the fires posed a safety risk to recreators and motorists.

The plan drew a legal challenge from environmental groups Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild and Willamette Riverkeeper, who argued the plan was a thinly veiled attempt at commercial salvage logging of some 20,000 acres of public lands, and that carrying it out would degrade water quality and wildlife habitat…

Timber company returns NW Washington tidelands to tribe free of cost

By Lynda V. Mapes, The Seattle Times

Dec. 22, 2021, 12:17 p.m.

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Port Blakely Companies, a family-owned company with timber operations in the U.S. and New Zealand, has returned 2 miles of waterfront and 125 acres of tidelands on Little Skookum Inlet in Mason County to the Squaxin Island Tribe, at no cost.

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The return of the tideland property is part of a growing “Land Back” movement, in which landowners are returning property lost by tribes when white settlers arrived and began colonizing the landscapes where Indigenous people had lived and thrived for thousands of years.

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The return of the shoreline restores the tribe’s direct access to Puget Sound, and some of the most productive shellfish beds in the region — the very reasons the tribe had made the land and water home.

Jordan Cove developers abandon plans for pipeline, Coos Bay LNG terminal

By Carisa Cegavske

The Oregonian – December 1, 2021

The developers that had hoped to build the Pacific Connector Pipeline and Jordan Cove Energy Project have told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission they do not intend to move forward with the project.

The developers filed a brief with FERC Wednesday that announced the decision.

“Among other considerations, Applicants remain concerned regarding their ability to obtain the necessary state permits in the immediate future in addition to other external obstacles,” wrote Donald Sullivan, manager and associate general counsel for Jordan Cove Energy Project and Pacific Connector Pipeline in Wednesday’s brief.

Dozens Risk Arrest to Protest Ongoing Post-fire Logging in Breitenbush Watershed

Cascadia Forest Defenders - November 16, 2021

Community members from across the state defy Forest Service closure order  to protest post-fire clearcutting

Detroit, OR – This morning, community organizers defied a closure order and are occupying a road leading to public forest slated for clearcutting in the Willamette National Forest. The organizers are holding a concert and teach-in, discussing the ecology and rich history of the area, and preparing for further actions if logging continues to move forward...

Over 100 global leaders pledge to end deforestation by 2030

By Jake Spring and Simon Jessop

Reuters – November 3. 2021

GLASGOW, Nov 2 (Reuters) - More than 100 global leaders have pledged to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade, underpinned by $19 billion in public and private funds to invest in protecting and restoring forests.

The promise, made in a joint statement issued late on Monday at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, was backed by the leaders of countries including Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which collectively account for 85% of the world's forests.

The Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forest and Land Use will cover forests totaling more than 13 million square miles, according to a statement released by the UK prime minister's office on behalf of the leaders…

Lies the Timber Industry Tells

By George Wuerthner

Counterpunch - October 8, 2021

An employee of RY Timber presented misleading commentary in his essay “Forest Service is Right to Restore Forest Health.”

First, keep in mind that the timber industry and forestry profession (both dependents on logging for their employment) have conveniently defined forest health.

For example, the commentator suggests dead beetle-kill lodgepole pine represents an “unhealthy” forest. From the timber industry perspective, he’s correct. Dead trees have little value to the mills.

However, ecologists have found bark beetles are a keystone species that creates many ecological opportunities for plants and animals.  The snag forests resulting from either beetles or wildfire have the second-highest biodiversity after old-growth forests…

Willamette National Forest occupiers seek to stop logging

By Zane Sparling

Portland Tribune – September 14, 2021

Eco-activists have scaled several trees — and they aren't coming down, they say — until the Biden Administration halts the planned sale of logging rights in the Willamette National Forest.

Members of Cascadia Forest Defenders say they have built several platforms 100 feet above the canopy in order to deter the planned Flat Country timber auction from going forward.

"They're staying on these platforms for the foreseeable future to keep this space occupied," said Daniel, an organizer for the group, who asked not to use their last name. "If any timber companies buy that sale — they're buying our resistance..."

Judge orders immediate actions at Willamette Basin dams to help salmon, steelhead

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must begin taking actions to improve passage for chinook salmon and winter steelhead struggling to survive.

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By Bradley W. Parks

OPB – Sept. 2, 2021

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A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take immediate action to improve fish passage at dams in the Willamette Basin.

In a final opinion and order issued this week, U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez said the Corps had for years failed to provide adequate passage for threatened chinook salmon and winter steelhead trout at dams it operates in the basin.

“As evinced by the listed species’ continuing decline, the Corps’ failure to provide adequate fish passage and mitigate water quality issues is causing substantial, irreparable harm to the salmonids,” Hernandez wrote in the opinion.

The order comes a little over a year after the court decided in favor of three environmental organizations that sued the Corps and the National Marine Fisheries Service, arguing the agencies weren’t doing their part to protect the species…

Biden signals plans to uphold Trump administration’s decision to end gray wolf protections

Biden officials say Trump’s call to end wolf protections was a move already years in the making and was the right decision, but say the feds are keeping an eye on a recent surge of pro-wolf killing and trapping laws in some states.

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By Carson McCullough

Courthouse News Service – August 20, 2021

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The Biden administration is reportedly not walking back the removal of federal protections for gray wolf populations, one of the last major environmental actions of the Trump administration.

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After nearly a year of calls to reinstate federal protections for gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act — including a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife by conservationists aimed at restoring the safeguards — officials say the Biden administration is standing by the decision made by his White House predecessor…

The gift we should give to the living world? Time, and lots of it

By George Monbiot

The Guardian – August 8, 2021

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Planting 10 saplings does not replace a twisted old oak. ‘Slow ecology’ is the only way to preserve and restore ancient habitats

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We have a slow food movement and a slow travel movement. But we’re missing something, and its absence contributes to our escalating crisis. We need a slow ecology movement, and we need it fast.

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The majority of the world’s species cannot withstand any significant disruption of their habitat by humans. Healthy ecosystems depend to a great extent on old and gnarly places, that might take centuries to develop, and are rich in what ecologists call “spatial heterogeneity”: complex natural architecture. They need, for example, giant trees, whose knotty entrails are split and rotten; great reefs of coral or oysters or honeycomb worms; braiding, meandering rivers full of snags and beaver dams; undisturbed soils reamed by roots and holes. The loss of these ancient habitats is one of the factors driving the global shift from large, slow-growing creatures to the small, short-lived species able to survive our onslaughts. Slow ecology would protect and create our future ancient habitats…

Monks Wood Wilderness: 60 years ago, scientists let a farm field rewild – here’s what happened

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology - July 22, 2021

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In the archive of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology there is a typed note from the 1960s that planted the seed of an idea.

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Written by Kenneth Mellanby, director of the Monks Wood Experimental Station, a former research centre in Cambridgeshire, UK, the note describes a four-hectare arable field that lies next to the station and the ancient woodland of the Monks Wood National Nature Reserve. After harvesting a final barley crop, the field was ploughed and then abandoned in 1961.

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The note reads:

It might be interesting to watch what happens to this area if man does not interfere. Will it become a wood again, how long will it take, which species will be in it?

So began the Monks Wood Wilderness experiment, which is now 60 years old. A rewilding study before the term existed, it shows how allowing land to naturally regenerate can expand native woodland and help tackle climate change and biodiversity loss…

Audit finds tax funded forest institute in Oregon misled public, may have broken state law

By Tony Schick

OPB – July 21, 2021

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The institute operates with broad authority and almost no oversight, undermining its public benefit and credibility, according to the audit released Wednesday by the secretary of state.

Oregon’s tax-funded forest education institute misled the public by presenting a biased view of forestry and might have broken the law by trying to influence policy, a state audit found.

The Oregon Forest Resources Institute, established by lawmakers in 1991 to provide credible public education based on facts and reliable science, operates with broad authority and almost no oversight, undermining its public benefit and credibility, according to the audit released Wednesday by the secretary of state.

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Auditors found that the agency “has long engaged in activities that may fall outside of its statutory authority.” They wrote that their findings “reasonably raise the question” of whether OFRI broke the law, which bars the agency from attempting to influence the actions of any other state body. But lawmakers would have to seek a formal legal opinion, the auditors said…

Biden ends large-scale logging on huge Alaska rainforest

PBS News Hour – July 15, 2021

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Thursday that it is ending large-scale, old-growth timber sales in the country’s largest national forest — the Tongass National Forest in Alaska — and will focus on forest restoration, recreation and other noncommercial uses.

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The U.S. Agriculture Department, which includes the Forest Service, also said it will take steps to reverse a Trump administration decision last year to lift restrictions on logging and road-building in the southeast Alaska rainforest, which provides habitat for wolves, bears and salmon…

The Crumbling Myth of Consequence-Free Intact Forest Loss

By Jenifer Skene

NRDC – June 22, 2021

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For decades, an unchecked myth that forests are a renewable resource has permeated how we view, consume, and regulate forests. In international parlance, the very meaning of the word “deforestation” is tied not to the act of cutting down trees, but how the forest is used afterwards: a stump-filled landscape is still deemed a forest if it’s replanted with saplings or allowed to regrow. Instead, companies can downplay their forest impacts with tenuous promises of nature’s capacity to heal and boasts that for every tree their suppliers cut down, they plant one (or even two!) in its stead, as if forests were a machine of discrete, interchangeable parts. It’s a notion based on a mixture of hubris and denial and fueled by corporate profit margins, that somehow we can raze centuries-old forests without consequence. That we can clearcut a forest and have it not even count as deforestation.

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But now, that myth is crumbling, with a groundswell of scientists, policymakers, and marketplace leaders raising an urgent alarm about the climate and biodiversity calamities that await if we don’t recognize the irreplaceability of the remaining intact forests we have left.

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Photography by Jesse Winter

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