Stepping up to defend Pacific Northwest forests
By Oliver Stiefel | October 25, 2023
Photo by Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project.
A year ago, President Biden marked Earth Day 2022 by announcing a policy to conserve “mature and old-growth forests” thanks to the “irreplaceable role” healthy forests play in fighting climate change. As a father of two, I feel a personal responsibility for preserving forests and fighting climate change, and it was great to see President Biden taking steps in the right direction. But here’s the problem: the federal agencies responsible for managing our forests are rushing to “get out the cut.” These agencies are dead set in implementing a policy of “logging our way out of the wildfire crisis.”
We are at a pivotal moment.
Research has shown that intact forests, particularly old-growth, are important for both climate change mitigation and species resilience. Trees remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it for decades or centuries. Cool, shady, moist forests provide critical habitat for countless species and are a bulwark against high-severity fires by reducing their speed and intensity. When fires do occur, post-fire ecosystems are rich with biodiversity and an important stage in forest regeneration. Logging of large, old trees—whether in green-tree logging projects or as post-fire “salvage” logging triggers severe environmental consequences by releasing massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, destroying wildlife habitat, damaging soils, introducing invasive species, and more.
And yet, the pace and scale of large-scale commercial logging projects—dressed up as wildfire mitigation or post-fire safety projects—has increased dramatically over the past several years. At the same time, federal agencies are reducing opportunities for public involvement and approving projects with little environmental review—a legacy of Trump-era rollbacks. We are facing a climate and biodiversity crisis, and we need to hold the line against these projects and protect mature and old forests.
The Forest Service is proposing commercial logging projects in forests home to multiple species protected by the Endangered Species Act including the Pacific marten, northern spotted owl, and Yellow-legged frog to name a few. Photos by Frank D. Lospalluto and California Department of Fish and Wildlife. CC BY 2.0, bit.ly/3qtvpkH.
Burned trees provide many ecological benefits for forest regeneration, wildlife habitat, and more. Photo of wildflowers in Winema National Forest by Zheyuan Guo. Photo by Dona Helkey. CC BY 2.0, bit.ly/3qtvpkH.
Crag and our clients are up for the challenge. Through strategic litigation and collaboration with scientists and communities, we have been working hard to protect Pacific Northwest forests, including by:
- Challenging a Trump-era rollback of protections for old, large trees in eastern Oregon. For over 25 years, the “21-inch-Rule” of the Eastside Screens protected what little mature forest habitat remains across eight million acres of national forestland on the east side of the Cascades.
- Defending mature and old growth forest stands from commercial logging. We are reviewing a number of programmatic-level planning decisions that would allow for thousands of acres of logging on public forests, and have recently filed two new cases to challenge logging in the Siuslaw and Applegate River Watersheds.
- Holding decision-makers accountable to the public for land management decisions. We are currently reviewing logging proposals in Central Oregon and Eastern Washington. Last July we filed a new case challenging the Forest Service’s use of a “categorical exclusion” to authorize commercial logging without environmental review under the guise of wildfire protection.
Actions speak louder than words, and we need this Administration to live up to its values; you can’t conserve mature and old-growth forests by cutting them down. Crag will continue to provide our clients with free high quality legal services to protect the Pacific Northwest’s mature forests for biodiversity and climate change mitigation now, and for the future.
Oliver Stiefel, Staff Attorney
Oliver’s docket focuses primarily on forest conservation issues, working with clients from Northern California, through Oregon and Washington, up to Southeast Alaska. He has advised dozens of conservation and community groups on projects from the early development stages all the way through litigation at the Court of Appeals. Outside of work he enjoys fly fishing, snowboarding, gardening, and cooking, and tries his best to keep up with his two toddlers.