FFRC Press Statement on Forest Service National Old-Growth Plan Amendment: September 19, 2024: Washington, DC: FFRC Executive Director Bill Imbergamo issued the following statement regarding Draft EIS for the Forest Service National Old Growth Amendment:
“The proposed nation-wide Forest Plan amendment for old growth violates the National Forest Management Act, the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act and conflicts with the statutory multiple use mandate the Forest Service functions under.
The DEIS fails to meet the minimum standards of NEPA for a “hard look” at the proposed action. It would impose significant new burdens on the staff of the Forest Service, through a forest planning process that is already barely functioning. Forest Planning has largely devolved to the point where it is an exercise in developing binding constraints on management, with optional goals that are subsequently not monitored in a meaningful or consistent way.
The Department is now proposing to throw this already dysfunctional process into further disarray, in the service of adding restrictive language on timber harvesting which has been shown to have little impact on the trajectory of older forests on the National Forest System. And they are proposing to do this while the Chief of the Forest Service is taking steps to reign in hiring because of what he characterized as a significant budget shortfall.
The proposed old-growth amendment will lead to the loss of additional old-growth forest across the National Forest System. The two-year period when adaptive strategies are developed will see both the loss of staff capacity for needed fuels reduction work and additional administrative objections and litigation. The combined delays in needed work will allow more catastrophic fire to destroy more acres of old-growth.
The Forest Service should spend the next two years implementing the badly needed forest management and hazardous fuels reduction projects that Congress provided funding for. Shifting gears to write complex new old-growth management approaches is at best a distraction, at worst a recipe for disaster.”
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For more information, contact Bill Imbergamo, Executive Director, at 703-629-6877 or bill@fedforest.org
About the FFRC: FFRC is a national coalition of wood products companies, local governments, conservation groups united by concern for the National Forests. FFRC supports improving the management of the federal lands to support healthy forests and vibrant rural communities.
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