Top Line: While the election of Donald Trump is a setback for the conservation of mature and old-growth forests, such can be overcome.
Figure 1. Old-growth forest in the western Cascades of Oregon on the Willamette National Forest. Source: Elizabeth Feryl (first appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness).
It began with a bang, with a presidential executive order requiring conservation of mature and old-growth forests on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management holdings.
It ended with a whimper, with a bureaucratic memorandum suggesting consideration of measures to conserve mature and old-growth forests in the National Forest System.
But this may not be such a bad thing after all, and it’s good to remember that persistent effort is often rewarded, even if far later than initially hoped. Let us review the chain of events leading to where mature and old-growth forests stand on the eve of a new presidential administration.
The Mature and Old-Growth Forest Executive Order
On Earth Day (also known as April 22) 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that, among other things, said:
Conserving old-growth and mature forests on Federal lands while supporting and advancing climate-smart forestry and sustainable forest products is critical to protecting these and other ecosystem services provided by those forests. . . . It is the policy of my Administration . . . [to] conserve America’s mature and old-growth forests on Federal lands . . .
It was a good start.
See Public Lands Blog posts: “Biden’s Executive Order on Forests, Part 1: A Great Opportunity” and “Biden’s Executive Order on Forests, Part 2: Seize the Day!”
The Mature and Old-Growth Forest Inventory
The Biden executive order required the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to complete an inventory of mature and old-growth (MOG) forests on their lands. On their collective 178.5 million acres of forested lands, the Forest Service found 80.1 million acres (45 percent of the collective acreage) and the BLM found 32.7 million acres (18 percent of the collective acreage) of mature and old-growth forestlands in their ownership. The figures are actually higher but the agencies didn’t have the data on 31 million acres of public forestlands in Alaska, the vast majority of which are likely MOG forests.
See Public Lands Blog post: “How Much Mature and Old-Growth Forest Does the US Have Left?”
The Bureau of Land Management: Missing in Action
While most BLM lands (save in Alaska) were included in the interagency MOG inventory, the Bureau of Large Mistakes took no further steps to conserve MOG forests, except for some last-minute references to old-growth (but not mature) forest in its final “conservation rule” published in mid 2024. Disappointing, but not surprising.
See Public Lands Blog posts: “The Forested Estate of the Bureau of Land Management” and “The BLM’s Proposed ‘Conservation’ Rule: Open for Comments”
The Forest Service: Draft National Old-Growth Amendment
In contrast to the BLM, the Forest Service did undertake an effort to “conserve” old-growth (but again, not mature) forests by issuing a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) to amend almost all national forest plans nationwide to provide for the “conservation” of old-growth forests (aka the National Old-Growth Amendment or NOGA).
See Public Lands Blog post: “Forest Service Proposes Rulemaking: An Opportunity to Conserve and Restore Mature and Old-Growth Forests”
Unfortunately, the Forest Service is made up entirely of bureaucrats who resist limits on their discretion and mostly of foresters who see a chainsaw as the answer to every problem (including imaginary problems), so the DEIS reflected that.
See Public Lands Blog post: “The Forest Service Proposal to Save Its Old Growth: A Start, Though Inadequate”
The Forest Service plan was to issue a final environmental impact statement (FEIS) and record of decision (ROD) before Biden left office in January. Word on the street is that the final proposed action would have been materially and substantially closer to what the conservation community was advocating for. However, Biden is being succeeded by his predecessor, so the politics changed dramatically.
The November 2024 General Election
One of my many criticisms of the Biden administration is that it failed to take into account the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which provides a way for the party that gains complete (House, Senate, and White House) political control to more easily reverse policies implemented by the previous administration of the other party—but only for “last minute” rules (effectively those finalized during the last half of the last year of an administration). If a policy is “CRAed,” any future administration is prohibited from trying to make similar policies. Accounting for the CRA, the effective lifetime of a four-year presidential term is three and a half years.
See Public Lands Blog post: “WTF Now?” in re CRA
The January Withdrawal
The Forest Service wisely decided not to issue an FEIS and a ROD that the incoming president and/or Congress might undo. The agency also officially “withdrew” its DEIS.
In a memorandum to the entire Forest Service bureaucracy, the chief of the Forest Service—rather than telling the bureaucracy to conserve old growth as the NOGA could have—merely “encourage[s]” field officers to “consider” measures that might conserve old growth later. Quite a letdown.
Overcoming Trump: Defense, of Course, but Also Offense
The Forest Service and the BLM have completely lost their social license to log old-growth forests and trees and are losing the license to log mature forests. That doesn’t change with the new president.
Donald Trump ran on promises to do lots of things, but he didn’t run on a pledge to liquidate the last of the nation’s older forests. Nonetheless, he might well try to do so, despite the fact that even he does not have the social license to do so.
While still attempting to log mature and old-growth forests, the Forest Service and the BLM are clear-cutting far less than they used to. The conservation community’s use of litigation, demonstrations, occupations, lobbying, administrative advocacy, and public engagement has been successful in stopping many (but, alas, not all) bad timber sales. Now is the time to redouble our efforts in the coming years.
The coalition advocating for the permanent protection of mature and old-growth forests on federal public lands is not disbanding under Trump. It will continue to advocate for the protection, both in Congress and in the administration.
Saving the last of the nation’s old forests will be as politically popular under the Trump administration as it has been under the Biden administration. Politically, if Trump fails to protect MOG forests (extremely likely), our job as conservationists will to make sure that all the voters know it.
See Public Lands Blog post: “WTF Now?” in re overcoming/surviving/prospering in spite of Trump
If at First You Don’t Succeed . . .
In 1977, I joined others who had been agitating for wilderness designation for the Opal Creek watershed in Oregon’s western Cascades since the early 1970s. Opal Creek’s magnificent low-elevation old-growth forests were imminently threatened with massive clear-cutting. We first gained some success in stopping timber sales. Later, bills were introduced in Congress, first in 1979, then 1982 and 1983. Opal Creek fell out of the final wilderness bill in 1984. Finally, in 1996, the Opal Creek Wilderness was established by Congress— a quarter century of conservation advocacy. From the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s, Opal Creek was in political limbo: Big Timber and the Forest Service could not log it, and conservationists could not save it.
The establishment of the Soda Mountain Wilderness took a third of a century.
The killing off of the Elk Creek Dam (even after it was half built) and including Elk Creek in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System only took forty-three years.
Good things come to those who persistently advocate, even if it takes far longer than it should.
The good news is that this current failure to protect older forests on federal public lands isn’t our first failure. The late great Representative Jim Jontz (D-IN) introduced legislation to protect late-successional (now branded as “mature and old-growth”) forests in 1992. The Jontz bill was ahead of its time.
Eventually, the mature and old-growth forests on federal public lands will be fully conserved for the benefit of biodiversity, the climate, watersheds, and this and future generations.
But only if the conservation community continues and redoubles its efforts.
We will.
Bottom Line: Mature and old-growth forest conservation will be as politically popular under Trump as it was under Biden. Time to get back to work.