Oppose Bill That Would Decimate Old Forests

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

Mature and old-growth trees provide critical wildlife habitat, preserve biodiversity, cleanse our water and air, promote healthy soil, and keep huge amounts of climate-warming carbon from being released into the atmosphere.

But a new bill in Congress would turn many of our old trees into stumps. It requires the Forest Service to harvest only mature forests, which would have catastrophic ecological and climate impacts.¹

Send an urgent message to our U.S. senators at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=52585: Oppose this bill that would decimate irreplaceable forests.

The deceptively named Promoting Effective Forest Management Act would double down on failed forest management policies and procedures. In particular, the bill would undermine efforts to protect the nation’s mature forests and trees — which are some of the most biodiverse and carbon-rich forests managed by the federal agencies.

Logging these forests would decimate swaths of wild forest in a world already running short on nature.

Take action: Tell our senators to vote “no” on the Promoting Effective Forest Management Act of 2022.

PennEnvironment and environmental advocates like you have been sending a steady message to decision-makers in Pennsylvania and across the country: Don’t log the trees and forests we love and need to protect and preserve our ecosystems.

This bill could reverse the progress we’ve made to save our forests. In April, President Biden issued a directive to inventory and protect America’s mature and old-growth forests. Plus, we’re closer than ever to winning permanent protections for roadless areas in the iconic Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

You don’t need a scientific report to tell you how precious an old forest is. You can tell just by stepping into it, walking among trees that are older than you are, sensing complex relationships that you can barely begin to fathom — between tree and soil, tree and air, tree and water, tree and plant, tree and animal, tree and fungi, and on and on.

All of which can be destroyed in a matter of hours, once the bulldozers and chainsaws arrive.

Let’s stand together to defend our mature and old-growth forests and trees.

Will you send a message to stop this destructive bill in its tracks?

1. Ellen Montgomery, “Groups tell Senators: Protect our forests, don’t encourage logging,” Environment America, September 29, 2022.