In a first-of-its-kind step, the Agriculture Department proposed to amend all of its 128 forest management plans to conserve and steward old-growth forests in its 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands on Tuesday. “This will provide consistent direction across the Forest Service on how to conserve and restore old-growth forest conditions across the nation,” said the White House.
The proposal follows an inventory that found the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, two of the largest overseers of public lands, together have 32 million acres of old growth and 80 million acres of mature forests. The Forest Service, a USDA agency, is the first to act. The BLM, part of the Interior Department, proposed a landscape health and conservation rule earlier this year and is reviewing comments on it.
“Climate change is presenting new threats like historic droughts and catastrophic wildfires,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and the proposed amendment “will help our old-growth forests thrive across our shared landscape.”
Forests capture the equivalent of more than 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions annually, said Brenda Malloy of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Conservation of old-growth forests would allow nature to “be a key climate solution,” she said.
To read a White House fact sheet on protection of old-growth forests, click here.