Biden-Harris Administration Proposes Plan to Protect and Steward Old-Growth Forests on National Forest System Lands
Today the Biden-Harris Administration is taking new steps to conserve, restore, and expand our nation’s old growth forests by advancing a proposal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Forest Service to amend all 128 forest land management plans to better steward old-growth forests across the entire National Forest System.
America’s forests are a key climate solution, absorbing carbon dioxide equivalent to more than 10 percent of U.S. annual greenhouse gas emissions. USDA’s National Forest Plan Amendment proposes a consistent framework to guide conservation and restoration of old-growth forest conditions across all national forests. This framework will also help to ensure that our nation’s forests remain resilient to increasing threats from climate change.
The proposed amendment will use the best available science, including Indigenous Knowledge, to drive management strategies that conserve, restore, and cultivate old-growth forest conditions across our national forests. The preferred alternative outlined in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement released today sets protections for existing old growth, outlines proactive stewardship and science-based management steps to reduce the threat of old-growth mortality from catastrophic wildfire, and would require a locally-informed adaptive management strategy to be developed within two years of a final decision.
The Forest Service and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) together manage approximately 32 million acres of old-growth and 80 million acres of mature forests on federal lands, for a total of 112 million acres. Old-growth forests represent 18 percent and mature forest another 45 percent of all forested land managed by the two agencies. Next week Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy John Podesta will share today’s progress with the world and speak about the role that forests play in combatting the climate crisis at the Oslo Tropical Forest Forum in Norway.
President Biden’s Executive Order on Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies and the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole-of-government approach are furthering efforts to safeguard and steward our nation’s forests, including through $50 million from the Inflation Reduction Act and the President’s Investing in America agenda to support old-growth conservation.
Other recent progress to conserve and restore our nation’s forests and expand access to outdoor space for communities include: