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After spending more than two years drafting a plan to manage and protect the nation’s old-growth forests as they endure the ravages of climate change, the Biden administration has abruptly abandoned the effort.
That decision by the U.S. Forest Service to shelve the National Old Growth Amendment ends, for now, any goal of creating a cohesive federal approach to managing the oldest trees on the 193 million acres of land it manages nationwide. Such steps will instead be taken at the local level, agency chief Randy Moore said.
“There is strong support for, and an expectation of us, to continue to conserve these forests based on the best available scientific information,” he wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to regional foresters and forest directors announcing the move. “There was also feedback that there are important place-based differences that we will need to understand in order to conserve old growth fore... Read more
