Back in June, the Forest Service published a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) outlining the agency’s proposal to amend all 128 Land Management Plans of the National Forest System “to develop a consistent management framework for conserving, stewarding, recruiting and monitoring old-growth forests.” This effort has been dubbed the National Old Growth Amendment, or NOGA. In the days that followed the publication of the NOGA DEIS, we detailed a number of ways to engage Congress and other stakeholders in the effort to protect old growth forests.
Currently there is no consistent national policy that governs the management of old-growth forests or protects them from commercial and climate-related threats. Reactions to the proposed NOGA framework have been mixed, with commercial logging representatives saying the NOGA amounts to little more than additional red tape for the industry and more work for courts. And while environmental NGOs and forestry stakeholders are making an effort to drive support for the amendment, they’re also calling for significant changes.
Despite a high volume of comments on the need to develop a framework to conserve mature growth (the stage immediately preceding old growth) forests, the most likely scenario is that the Forest Service punts this authority to local planning units due to capacity constraints. A key question is whether the Forest Service will address ambiguities and perceived loopholes in the DEIS that many groups argue provide too much authority to cut trees.
To date there have been almost 7,000 comments submitted directly to the Forest Service, with tens-of-thousands that have been gathered by stakeholder organizations expected in the coming weeks. Public comments on the Forest Service’s proposed plan are due just over a week from today on September 20th and can be submitted here.
In a similar vein, the Forest Service recently announced that the release of the DEIS for an amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan, initially anticipated at the end of August, is now expected in October. The Northwest Forest Plan covers 24.5 million acres of federally managed lands in California, Oregon, and Washington. It was established in 1994 to address threats to threatened and endangered species while also contributing to social and economic sustainability in the region.
The Forest Service is amending the Northwest Forest Plan to address new conditions with a focus on five key areas: wildfire resilience, climate change adaptation, tribal inclusion, sustainable communities, and conservation of old growth ecosystems and related biodiversity. Like the NOGA, the publication of the Northwest Forest Plan DEIS will trigger a 90-day comment period to solicit feedback on the plan.
The Northwest Forest Plan Area Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) will meet later this month to provide further recommendations to the Forest Service on the plan. In July, the FAC published a comprehensive set of recommendations to guide the Forest Service’s amendment of the plan, including high-prioritization of “Tribal inclusion and honoring Tribal, treaty, reserved, retained, and other similar rights.”
The National Old Growth and Northwest Forest Plan amendments represent both executive interest in conservation and regional efforts to institute modern perspectives into forest management. As the end of the Biden Administration approaches, stakeholders are encouraged to participate in these comment periods to demonstrate public interest in these important topics and to continue the dialogue on what’s necessary to adequately protect old growth forests.
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