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Forest and climate scientists fear Biden delay on mature forest protection

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Two hundred leading U.S. forest ecologists and climate scientists are calling on the Biden Administration to do much more, and much sooner, to protect old-growth and mature forests on federal lands to combat climate change. Their urging comes after Biden’s announcement in December of the first nationwide amendment in more than a hundred years to change all 128 U.S. Forest Service management plans in order to protect stands of old-growth trees as carbon reservoirs. The signed letter received at the White House Feb. 24, and also received by the secretaries of agriculture and interior, calls for an immediate moratorium on logging of not only old-growth forests, but also mature forests with trees 100 years old or older on federal lands. Those mature forests are currently managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for multiple use — including logging, wildfire mitigation, recreation and wildlife and ecosystem protection. “Because of the global loss of mature and old-growth forests… and their importance in mitigating the climate and biodiversity crisis on federal lands,” the letter states, “we fully support calls by fellow scientists for a moratorium on logging in these critically important forests.” The letter continues: “We are concerned that the administration’s proposed old-growth amendment does not alter or prescribe any substantive standards for the management of old forests that … remain vulnerable to dozens of timber sales nationally.” Old-growth forest along a highway on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state. The nation’s mature forests need deeper protections on both…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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