Tag: executive order

Press Release: Federal Agencies Release Joint Report on Mature and Old-Growth Forests

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 20, 2023

On April 20, 2023, the two federal agencies charged with overseeing federally-managed public forests in the US released a much-anticipated report defining, identifying, and producing an initial inventory of mature and old-growth forests. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) inventory, which will continue to expand, identified more than 32 million acres of old-growth and around 80 million acres of mature forest across 200 types of forests.

In the Media: Not Going Flat

by Henry Houston
Originally published by EugeneWeekly.com on January 12, 2023

The U.S. Forest Service ended 2022 with a decision that local environmentalists are celebrating.

The federal agency decided to withdraw its plans for the Flat Country timber sale, which would have affected some more than 100-year-old trees in a nearly 75,000 acre project area in the Willamette National Forest near McKenzie Bridge.

Press Release: Over 100 “Kayaktivists” and Community Members Protest Old-Growth Logging

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 8, 2022

Leaburg, OREGON — Today, a “kayaktivist” flotilla of over 100 concerned community members rallied on the McKenzie River to protest an old-growth logging sale in the Willamette National Forest. The Flat Country project, proposed by the U.S. Forest Service, targets over 2,000 acres of old-growth and mature forests for logging across the headwaters of the McKenzie River. The agency could auction the old growth to be cut at any moment.   Attendees held up signs from boats and kayaks, and unfurled a large banner declaring “Forest Defense is Watershed Defense”, to draw attention to the logging sale’s impact on downstream drinking water.

Press Release: Mature and old-growth logging sale undermines Biden climate policy; threatens McKenzie River, habitat

August 2, 2022 — Today, old-growth forest and wildlife advocates provided the U.S. Forest Service the means to reconsider the pending Trump-era “Flat Country” timber sale in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest. The vast majority of the proposed logging would be in mature and old-growth forests, with over 1,000 acres of clearcutting, even though President Biden this year ordered his administration to prioritize conserving these forests as a crucial climate protection.

Opinion: Biden’s old-growth forest executive order has giant hole

by Bethany Cotton, Conservation Director for Cascadia Wildlands
Originally published in The 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.