President Joe Biden signed an executive order during a visit to Seattle on Friday aimed at protecting mature and old forests on federal soil, boosting forest maintenance and tree planting projects across the country and tackling global Climate change by stepping up diplomatic efforts to combat aggressive logging in the Amazon, Africa and Southeast Asia.
Among other things, the order instructs the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to identify and inventory mature and old forests within a year and develop policies to protect them from climate change and forest fire risks.
“We’ve gotten to the point where the environmental crisis has become so obvious, with the exception of the former president, that we really have the opportunity to do things we couldn’t have done two, five, ten years ago,” Biden said before sitting down. to sign the order in Seward Park, Seattle.
The order focuses on some of Oregon’s busiest policies. It is loaded with language to reduce the risk of forest fires – the packaging may be designed to make it more enjoyable for rural communities and the timber industry, which has long forced the federal government to “manage” forests more aggressively by boosting logging.
The large reforestation appropriations in the federal infrastructure bill will almost certainly bring new jobs to these communities and more logs to local mills. But Friday’s executive order was clearly focused on protecting trees, increasing carbon sequestration in forests and meeting the climate administration’s agenda.
Nick Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council’s logging group, said in an email Friday that the federal government needs to focus on reducing emissions from major forest fires by managing unhealthy and oversupplied federal forests and providing wood products that store carbon.
“We are concerned that the president’s executive order is only adding more bureaucracy to our shattered system of federal forest management and will divert more resources from the work that needs to be done on the ground right now,” he said.
But the order to inventory and protect “mature forests” is welcomed by environmental groups, who say the biggest threat to forests and the climate still comes from chainsaws, not forest fires. They are cautiously optimistic that the order will create long-sought political safeguards for what can and cannot be cut, preventing agencies from gradually removing existing old growth and establishing protection for mature trees, which are crucial. for carbon storage.
“It’s not enough to just protect the remnants of ancient forests,” said Steve Pederi, Oregon Wild’s conservation director. “The trees that grow, those over 80 years old, are a big deal. We are excited to see them include these mature forests in the order. “
Together, Forest Service and BLM manage about 30 million acres of land in Oregon, making them the largest land managers in the state. Most of Oregon’s true old growth has already been cut down, but its wet forests west of the Cascades are some of the fastest growing and most carbon-rich in the world.
The Earth Day executive order is also arriving as the first tranche of $ 8 billion in forest-related money included in the federal infrastructure bill begins to flow. About $ 5 billion is earmarked to reduce the risk of forest fires across the country by thinning small trees, removing dead vegetation and introducing more prescribed forest fires. It will also fund other forest fire mitigation programs nationwide, including a $ 1 billion grant program for community forest fire protection and $ 600 million to increase firefighters’ pay.
It is not yet clear how much of this funding will come to Oregon. But where to spend it is already the subject of deep debate.
Earlier this month, the Forest Service published an initial list of reforestation projects to be funded by the infrastructure bill. It includes $ 4.5 million in 2022 for the cleaning of 5,000 acres in the Deshut National Forest and an additional $ 37 million over the next two years for the final treatment of 50,000 acres northwest of Bend.
This week, Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley announced another $ 11.7 million in funding – partly from the infrastructure bill – to undertake five projects in the state to “thin out overgrown forests, support better ecosystems, reduce the threat of forestry.” fires and job creation. “
The money comes as locals in Bend are furious with the timber forestry service, which involves cutting down older, fire-resistant trees on a popular mountain bike trail outside the city to prevent forest fires. This is just one example of the state’s timber sales, in which environmentalists say federal agencies are offering older trees to make sales more economically attractive to timber companies.
“This is Oregon’s little dirty secret,” Pederi said, referring to timber sales on BLM land west of the Cascades, “where we are enthusiastically recording old growth. We just don’t tell anyone. “
Biden’s executive order does not prohibit the felling of mature or old growing trees, nor does it provide new protection for them. But the agencies have been instructed to prepare the inventory as soon as possible, present it for public comment and develop “science-based” policies that address forest fire threats and climate impacts.
The infrastructure bill will significantly expand afforestation projects on federal land, and the order calls on agencies to develop a plan to increase the collection of cones and seeds and expand the capacity of nurseries.
It also directs the State Department to clarify how to reduce or eliminate US purchases of agricultural products grown illegally or recently deforested, and to coordinate with other agencies to use foreign aid, trade instruments and financial mechanisms to combat aggressive logging. internationally.
A year after he took office amid a series of climate promises, Biden’s ambitious climate program has been marred by failures. The president hosted a virtual summit on global warming at the White House last day on Earth. He is using the moment to double the United States’ goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, putting the country at the forefront of the fight against climate change.
A year later, his most massive proposals remain stagnant on Capitol Hill, despite renewed warnings from scientists that the world is rushing into a dangerous future marked by extreme heat, drought and weather.
In addition, Russia’s war in Ukraine has changed climate change policies, prompting Biden to release oil from the national strategic reserve and promote more domestic drilling in hopes of reducing the high gas prices that empty US portfolios.
Federal timber sales across the country have doubled in the past 20 years as Republicans and Democrats have called for more aggressive thinning to prevent wildfires.
While the Forest Service and BLM have allowed the felling of older trees for years, former U.S. Deputy Chief of Forestry Jim Furnish said infrastructure funding will reduce the need for agencies to subsidize thinning of smaller trees and remove flammable vegetation. from including older trees in their sales.
Many environmentalists and scientists believe that mechanical thinning projects, unless surgically applied, are an inefficient, costly, Sisyphean task that damages forest soils, removes carbon, and needs to be reviewed regularly when smaller trees and the vegetation grows again. They believe that such treatments actually increase the risk of fire by opening the canopy, drying the soil and allowing wind-powered fires to spread faster. They say federal funding would be best spent on helping homes become more fireproof and launching protected space projects in at-risk communities.
Dominic Della Sala, chief scientist at Wild Heritage, an organization focused on forest conservation, said the executive order was a good first step. But, he said, the process needs to move fast, because peer-reviewed science already exists, researchers know where mature and old forests are and understand the threats to them.
His biggest concern is that the forest service will be swimming for money, targeting large landscapes and potentially chasing large trees as the process progresses.
“Everything is written in small print,” he said. “I hope what we will see in the meantime is an end to logging in mature and old forests. This must stop in order for the process to develop. “
-Associated Press contributed to this story.
– Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-221-8505; @tedsickinger
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