Wikipedia defines a ‘nothing-burger’ as “a situation that receives a lot of attention but which, upon closer examination, reveals to be of little to no real significance.” That unfortunately applies to the Forest Service’s national old-growth amendment (NOGA), which despite President Biden’s executive order directing the agency to conduct an inventory of mature and old-growth forests (hereafter called “old”) on federal lands for “conservation purposes,” did nothing to move the needle on old forest protections. While the president was a signatory to the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration to end deforestation and forest degradation globally by 2030, and was committed to the Paris Climate Agreement, including maintaining “carbon sinks and reservoirs,” the Biden Administration is now ending without a single forested acre protected by NOGA, and the related Northwest Forest Plan amendment, with severe forest degradation consequences. All sides are to blame for a failed NOGA policy that was the result of: (1) definition paralysis that delayed action; (2) rebranding strategies by the timber industry that positioned logging as the solution to all “forest health” issues rather than the problem itself; (3) questionable agency threat assessments that supported the industry narrative; and (4) the lack of a unified vision for forest protection by conservation groups. Let me break the failure to act down, piece by piece. Redwood forests in California are among the oldest and tallest in the U.S. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler for Mongabay. Paralysis over old growth forest definition The NOGA process initially got bogged down in a so-called…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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