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Earth United States

Joe Biden Plans To Ban Logging in US Old-Growth Forests in 2025 (theguardian.com) 181

Joe Biden's administration last week announced a new proposal aimed at banning logging in old-growth forests, a move meant to protect millions of trees that play a key role in fighting the climate crisis. From a report: The proposal comes from an executive order signed by the president on Earth Day in 2022 that directed the US Forest Service and the land management bureau to conduct an inventory of old-growth and mature forest groves as well as to develop policies that protect them. "We think this will allow us to respond effectively and strategically to the biggest threats that face old growth," the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, told the Washington Post. "At the end of the day, it will protect not just the forests but also the culture and heritage connected to the forests."

The US Forest Service oversees 193m acres of forests and grasslands, 144m of which are forests. In its inventory conducted after Biden's executive order, the agency found that the vast majority of forests it oversees, about 80%, are either old-growth or mature forests. It found more than 32m acres of old-growth forests and 80m acres of mature forests on federal land. The land management bureau defines old-growth forests as those with trees that are in later stages of stand development, which typically means at least 120 years of growth, depending on species. The giant sequoias in California, for example, are old-growth trees. Mature forests, meanwhile, have trees that are in the development stage immediately before old growth.

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Joe Biden Plans To Ban Logging in US Old-Growth Forests in 2025

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  • Wonderful news. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KirbyCombat ( 1142225 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:18PM (#64107203)

    We will not be logging on any of the forest land that we have not logged on in the last 100 years or more.
    Logging on the 20 % (32 m acres) that we have been logging on for the last 100 years will continue exactly the same.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by korgitser ( 1809018 )
      This will at best go in effect if and after he wins the elections. Consider it part of the election campaign and not much more.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        This will at best go in effect if and after he wins the elections. Consider it part of the election campaign and not much more.

        As opposed guaranteeing that Mexico will pay for the wall he never stole enough to finish?

      • If the polls hold up, it's a lot more likely old Joe himself will be banned in 2025.

        • The pollsters have all been busy changing their weighting methodologies over the last few years, trying to figure out how they can better represent Trump voters after failing to predict the 2016 election. It's possible they've over-corrected, and/or that Trump voters are louder than they were in 2016.

          Not that I think he can't lose. He's certainly the wrong pick for the Democrats. The best thing going for him is he's not Trump, which is a sad state of affairs. If they nominated someone with a strong, transfo

          • Biden said something recently that I think summed it really well, "If Trump wasn't running I might not be either" (and I take that as he definitely would not be).

            If Trump fell out favor with Republicans after 2020 (like he should have) chances are we are watching Democratic primary debates now and the recent Newsom/DeSantis debate is a probable reality for the office.

            I don't think the Democrats have a viable candidate again Trump and that's unfortunate. Stack that with the existential dread a 2nd Trump ter

            • I don't think the Democrats have a viable candidate again Trump and that's unfortunate

              Trump's main message lately has been that all democrats are evil and must be destroyed in every way possible. If the democrats subbed in a 35 year old with no political experience as the next candidate for POTUS from their party, Trump and his cult would still label that person as evil and part of the "deep state", and his followers would be riled up to vote for Trump to "save America" from this person.

              There is no substance to Trump's campaign. This makes it really, really, difficult to run against.

              • Joe Bidens substance was simply blocking out Trump negatives and letting the Democrats push anything that came well funded from K-Street. 4 more years of the deep state and the administrative state battle it out for all the tax dollars known to man kind, and half the debt. I am not surprised by inflation, I was surprised it was for only 12 months and 10% for my zipcode outside of cars and houses.
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's kind if mind boggling that Trump even has a chance after last time, and with all his legal problems. But then again look at Argentina.

    • That's the whole point of protection...to protect these forests against logging in the future.
      • Allow me to translate for you. The GP is saying nobody wants to log those forests anyway, and likely never will, and this ban changes exactly nothing.

        I disagree with them, actually, because if you click past the predictably trash journalism of guardian article, the proposal isn't a ban on logging.

  • Pro Strat (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:19PM (#64107209)
    Install systemd in those forests so the logs become monumentally harder to use.
  • by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:20PM (#64107211)

    So out of the 144 million acres that the federal government has an agency to oversee (and the federal government generally has way too much land overall, especially in the west, but that's a different topic), 32 million of it qualifies as "old growth", and they don't want that stuff logged.

    That seems just fine. That seems like a totally normal policy that won't mess up anything, because 32 million acres is really small compared to the total forested acreage in America (like 800+ million acres), and even small compared to the 144 million acres in question.

    This government policy seems totally fine.

    • I agree.

      Logging old growth forests does substantially more damage than logging on land that's already being used for that purpose. Even if it's only a small percentage of the total area, this is an important step to protecting what little natural habitat we have left.

      This government policy does, in fact, seem totally fine.
      =Smidge=

    • A lot of federal forest is already logged, so it isn't really a big deal to continue allowing logging. The reason a lot of it exists is leftover from WWII when access to good quality timber was a national security issue. Explicitly protecting old growth is explicitly protecting the environmentally important portions for habitat and biodiversity.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:21PM (#64107217)

    In his youth Biden actually planted many of these forests.

  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bubblyceiling ( 7940768 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @04:38PM (#64107269)
    Those trees are so old that if we cut them down, they will not recover in our lifetimes, not even in our children's lifetimes. With climate change looming, probably not a good idea to make irreversible decisions like cutting down old growth trees
    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Yeah. Good. Old growth forests are carbon neutral. Losing as much mass to death and decay as they absorb from the atmosphere. Better to cut them down and replace them with young, faster growing species.

      • Is a lower orifice your source?

      • Not totally correct to be fair based on some analysis:

        https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

        Our results demonstrate that old-growth forests can continue to accumulate carbon, contrary to the long-standing view that they are carbon neutral. Over 30 per cent of the global forest area is unmanaged primary forest, and this area contains the remaining old-growth forests.

        Half of the primary forests (6×108 hectares) are located in the boreal and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. On the basis of our an

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          Young trees grow fast, but old trees store a disproportional amount of carbon.

          And then they die, fall over and rot. Walk through an old growth forest some time. It's fewer, large trees with a lot of windfall between them. And all that stuff lying on the ground goes two places. It decomposes, expelling CO2 into the atmosphere. And it provides a nutrient source for the remaining trees. Which may be adding carbon, but increasingly from stuff lying on the ground. Not atmospheric CO2. So old growth forests become a closed system, carbon-wise.

          We expect,

          How about actually measuring it.

          however, that much of this carbon, even soil carbon, will move back to the atmosphere if these forests are disturbed.

          Soil carbon doe

          • Do you not think the decay of the forest wasn't factored into those studies? Can you point that out please?

            Do you have a counterfactual that old growth forests are neutral or carbon positive?

            • by PPH ( 736903 )

              Do you not think the decay of the forest wasn't factored into those studies? Can you point that out please?

              When studies use terminology like "We expect", I can assume that not much rigorous analysis was done.

              Do you have a counterfactual that old growth forests are neutral or carbon positive?

              Yes. I've been in forests. And the difference between a thousand year old forest and a 10,000 year old forest just isn't evident. There isn't 10 times the mass in tree growth or topsoil.

              • How do you know how much carbon nurse log trees get from the atmosphere? Guesswork?

              • So to you the term counterfactual means "i went and looked around and this is wat I think?"

                As Malarkey Joe would say "c'mon man"

                • by PPH ( 736903 )

                  "i went and looked around and this is wat I think?"

                  Yes. Science and modeling can only attempt to represent reality. When they disagree, reality wins.

      • Old growth forests are carbon neutral. Losing as much mass to death and decay as they absorb from the atmosphere

        [citation needed]

        Before you don't bother to go looking for a citation for your bullshit let me just save you no time and tell you that only applies to rainforests.

      • Or make furniture and houses from the old trees, taking the wood out of the carbon cycle for a good while and allowing new growth to consume more carbon.
  • And maybe when we replant those forests, we plant different species, that are faster growing, and more suited to the warmer environment we have now and will have in the near future.

    • This kind of hubris has never bitten humanity in the ass before.

    • Actually, we probably need to stop replanting forests. One of the problems with forests is that they are planted with a single species of tree. Miles and miles of genetically identical trees. A natural forest sustains a mix of species, which makes it more resilient.
  • if they stop logging how will they keep track of how many tress are cut down, geez... some people never think

  • by dbrueck ( 1872018 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @05:19PM (#64107377)

    One of the reasons the western US has such a problem with wildfires is that those lands have been somewhat mismanaged for decades, and one of the big examples of mismanagement is the prevention of clearing out growth that should be cleared out. Thus, when the fires inevitably come, they are far worse because you have thousands of miles of very dry fuel.

    Similarly, many previously healthy forests are being overrun by destructive beetles and other invasive bugs. Again, uncleared old growth is a major factor.

    All of this has grown into a vicious cycle too: natural, managed burns are good for the long term health of the forests. They help stop the spread of invasive bugs and burn off a lot of dead fuel before it turns into an unmanageable bomb. While the state and federal teams do try to allow natural burns to happen, they often have to aggressively put out the fires sooner than is ideal for the natural ecosystem, because the massive amount of unconsumed fuel means greater odds that the fire can get out of control.

    We've all seen the horrors of too much logging, and I'm 100% against that. But if you truly care about the environment, then there is actually a decent amount of logging that can happen that is appropriate, helpful, and probably required. Just like a blanket green light on unlimited logging would be terrible policy, any blanket ban on logging is equally bad in the long term. Hopefully whatever policies they settle on will allow for the right balance to exist.

    • Is old growth more resistant? Have forests ever dealt with fires and global warming before? Why not just let nature take its course?

      • Great question! The problem is that we want nature to take its course... but only to a point. We interfere to try and prevent loss of life, destruction of buildings and other property, and to keep in place forests we deem desirable (e.g. a national park we find pretty).

        So what we're after - and this is why it's a tricky problem - is a policy that lets nature do its thing as much as possible, while allowing us to interfere to meet our "unnatural" goals, and then deal with the effects of that interference in

        • Why not just insure everyone and let nature manage itself?

          • I'll assume you're asking in good faith, so here goes: I already mentioned a few reasons (loss of life isn't exactly something insurance helps with if you're the one dying), but also insurance has to be economically viable to work. Just as insurance companies are starting to pull out of the southeast US due to recurring hurricane damage, the same would happen if we didn't try to prevent property destruction from forest fires, and then basically everyone in those areas would become uninsurable.

            So the short a

            • How economically viable were credit default swaps until the Fed printed trillions to support their prices? Why not use the same trick to insure everybody?

              What is untenable about paying attention so you get out of the way of fires and rebuilding simply if need be?

      • Is old growth more resistant? Have forests ever dealt with fires and global warming before? Why not just let nature take its course?

        Old growth is actually more fire resistant. The problem is, for many decades, government agencies did NOT "let nature take its course" - the policy was to suppress all fires as much as possible. It's pretty widely accepted, now, that was a mistake because it led to the brush and other undergrowth not being cleared out - leading to longer, hotter fires that trees can't survive.

        The policies have changed more recently, and they even will now set proscribed burns to try and correct the problem. But a problem th

    • It does seem that Biden wants to repeat the mistakes of the past. We went all out for fire suppression and eventually got really big fires. One example;

      https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn... [nps.gov]

  • Even without climate change it's mad to deforest (even if we re-plant) given the epic scale it was done in the past.

  • This is a completely irrelevant commitment by Biden. It is basically a promise to not harvest trees that were never going to get harvested for other more rational reasons.

    The entire point of the US Forest is to responsibly grow trees for harvesting. The agency was created because timber barons stripped the trees and moved west leaving desolated non-replanted land in their trail. The old growth trees on US Forest land are old growth because it is simply too costly to construct a road for harvesting that
  • "let's not further destroy the only carbon sequestration mechanism we have working."

    The question is why is he promising to do it after the elections? Why not now?

    And are Republicans making similar promises? If not, why?

  • by BigFire ( 13822 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @12:39AM (#64108293)

    Most of the lumber are planned forest farms.

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