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| Dear Friend, |
| In a win for the trees and our climate, the Biden administration announced on Earth Day last year an important first step toward safeguarding mature and old-growth forests on federal lands. With help from advocates like you, the administration signed an exective order, directing agencies to inventory mature and old-growth forests on federal lands nationwide — and to develop policies to protect them. The United States Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently released an inventory of mature and old-growth forests, a crucial first step in protecting these climate forests. Urge BLM and USFS to issue a rule protecting climate forests. |
| Together, we have urged the administration to protect mature and old-growth forests to address our climate and biodiversity crises and the president has heard your calls. In addition to releasing their inventory, the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have announced steps to protect mature and old-growth forests on federal lands and are collecting comments from the public to help develop a rule. The agency is focusing on a variety of threats to these forests, including from fire, but is not yet prioritizing logging as a significant threat. We need to keep the pressure on, and build broad support for a strong, long-lasting national rule that protects mature and old-growth trees across federal lands from logging. |
| Safeguarding and expanding these carbon-rich forests on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands is one of the most important, cost-effective, and immediately available strategies to fight the climate crisis. Older trees accumulate and store enormous amounts of carbon over many centuries and provide vital wildlife habitat, clean water, clean air, and mitigation for floods and droughts. Larger, older trees are also far more fire resistant. |
| Unfortunately, mature forests and trees on federal lands are threatened by numerous proposed and ongoing logging projects, in spite of the executive order to conserve them. We need to ensure America's mature and old-growth trees and forests remain in place to mitigate climate change, and to maintain their natural benefits for future generations. |
| Protecting them is exactly the direction that federal forest management should take. Tell BLM and USFS to urgently issue a rule to protect mature and old-growth trees from logging in America's federal forests. |
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Sincerely,
Blaine Miller-McFeeley
Senior Legislative Representative |
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| Photo Credits: A river winds through a forest seen directly from above Klamat Falls, Oregon (Brian Handy / Getty Images) |
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