John,

There's nothing like walking through an old-growth forest.

Magnificent Douglas firs, red spruces and white pines stand like giants against the sky, while ferns, shrubs, mosses and wildflowers dot the understory.

But right now, 20 logging projects from the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia to the Kootenai National Forest in Montana are putting mature and old-growth trees in imminent danger.1

We've set a goal of raising $50,000 by June 30 to keep our mature and old-growth forests off the chopping block in the year ahead. Will you donate to our 2023 Fiscal Year-End Drive today?

Last year, President Biden ordered a first-ever inventory of America's mature and old-growth forests on federal lands and directed federal agencies to then develop policies to protect them. But the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have continued to allow timber companies to log older trees at an alarming rate.

Right now, logging projects are targeting more than 300,000 acres of mature and old-growth forests.2

We know that the longer a forest remains untouched by human development, the more that life can grow and thrive there.

But these old-growth forests aren't just irreplaceable habitat for countless animal species (though they are). They're also our best allies in the fight against climate change -- allies we lose the minute we cut them down.

The older a tree is, the better it is at storing carbon. Nearly 70% of all carbon stored in trees is absorbed in the second half of their lives.3

We simply can't afford to chop down our oldest trees. But if we don't act quickly, we could soon hear the chainsaws and see our beloved forests reduced to stumps.

Donate to our 2023 Fiscal Year-End Drive to be a guardian for our oldest trees in the year ahead.

We won't let these forests be chopped down. Here's what we're doing to keep trees standing for generations to come:

• We're asking the Biden administration to put mature and old-growth forests on federal lands off-limits to logging. Our national network has already generated more than 40,000 public comments and are continuing to raise the voices of community members, scientists and activists around the country to tell the U.S. Forest Service to defend these trees.
• We're urging Congress to pass the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which would keep our forests intact -- permanently. This bill will safeguard millions of acres of America's national forests, permanently protecting roadless areas from logging and road-building by strengthening the 2001 Roadless Rule.
• We're also working to protect the North American boreal forest from logging. Our supporters and advocates are calling on major companies -- including Procter & Gamble, The Home Depot, Amazon and Costco -- to not use wood from the boreal for their products.

Environment Colorado and our national network have a long history of defending our forests. We helped deliver landmark protections for 60 million acres of roadless areas in national forests, and we helped restore these roadless protections to all 9.2 million acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest earlier this year.

Now, we're sending a strong message to the Biden administration to let our oldest trees grow. And we're just getting started. With your help, we can protect mature and old-growth forests in the year ahead.

Will you stand with us as we stand up for our oldest trees?

Thank you,

Ellen Montgomery

1. Ellen Montgomery, "Threatened Forests," Environment America, May 19, 2023.
2. Ellen Montgomery, "Threatened Forests," Environment America, May 19, 2023.
3. Torah Kachur, "As trees age, their climate benefit grows," CBC News, August 18, 2017.

Your donation will be used to support all of our campaigns to protect the environment, from saving the bees and protecting public lands, to standing up for clean water and fighting climate change. None of our work would be possible without supporters like you. Environment Colorado may transfer up to $50 per dues-paying member per year into the Environment Colorado Small Donor Committee.