Biden Failed To Protect Ancient Trees

Illustration: Maddie Abuyuan/HuffPost; Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images Sporting aviator sunglasses and standing in front of a lectern last month in Manaus, Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon, outgoing President Joe Biden spoke of the importance of safeguarding the world’s carbon-rich forests — a message he delivered numerous times throughout his tenure. And though Biden’s Forest Service halted some of the most controversial logging projects amid public backlash, including the so-called “Flat Country” project in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, which would have allowed for about 2,000 acres of mature and old-growth Douglas fir and western hemlock to be cut down, there is nothing preventing the agency from putting them back in the pipeline once Trump takes over. Biden’s Forest Service defended its record on old-growth forests in a lengthy email statement, pointing to the nationwide inventory completed last year, which it called “a fundamental first step to conserving and expanding old growth,” as well as a review process it implemented last year that requires Chris French, deputy chief of the National Forest System, to sign off on all proposed timber projects in areas that include old-growth trees. In her comments on the draft EIS, Law challenged a recent Forest Service analysis that found “wildfire, exacerbated by climate change and fire exclusion, is the leading threat to mature and old-growth forests, followed by insects and disease” and that “tree cutting is currently a relatively minor threat.” Law dismissed the government conclusion as “completely wrong” and cited several studies, including one that found logging accounted for 50% of all forest carbon loss across the western United States, compared with 36% from insect damage and 18% from wildfires, and another she co-authored that determined carbon emissions from logging-related activity in Oregon, Washington and California were five times higher than the combined emissions from wildfires in those three states. The agency stressed that the changes “are not a wholesale revision of the NWFP but rather a focused amendment that targets needed adjustments to address key issues such as wildfire resilience, climate change adaptation, tribal inclusion, sustainable communities and the conservation of old-growth ecosystems.” The agency declined to comment on what it expects from the Trump administration, saying it would be “inappropriate to speculate.” During a Dec. 5 webinar on the proposal, Jacqueline Buchanan, the regional forester for the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Region, said the agency is focused on moving the process forward and has not received any signal to shift gears.