Over 200 Scientists and Over 200 Environmental Groups Urge Biden to Protect Mature and Old-Growth Forests for Real

In early 2024, over 200 scientists and over 200 environmental and environmental justice groups signed letters to the Biden Administration, urging the Administration to completely protect all mature and old-growth forests on federal public lands from logging, including “thinning”, and regardless of the reasons that federal land agencies claim for wanting to sell public trees from mature and old-growth forests to private logging companies.

In short, the two letters urged the Administration to: (1) close the logging loophole in the Administration’s current proposal for public old-growth forests–a loophole that would allow any type of destructive logging so long as the Forest Service or BLM claimed, with a wink and a nod, that they are supposedly doing the logging for the good of the forest (which they consistently claim currently, even when they are clearcutting old-growth forest); (2) include all mature forests in the plan, and protect them completely from logging, instead of excluding mature forests as the current proposal would do; and (3) provide explicit protection for all mature and old-growth forests from logging, including after fire, drought, wind, or other natural disturbances occur that result in varying levels of snag recruitment (tree mortality).

The scientist letter can be found here, and the environmental group letter can be found here.