By MATTHEW BROWN | Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. — The Biden administration has identified more than 175,000 square miles (453,000 square kilometers) of old growth and mature forests on U.S. government land and plans to craft a new rule to better protect the nation’s woodlands from fires, insects and other side effects of climate change, officials said Thursday.
The results from the government’s first-ever national inventory of mature and old-growth forests on federal land revealed more expanses of older trees than outside researchers had recently estimated.
Most are in Western states such as Idaho, California, Montana and Oregon. But they’re also in New England, around the Great Lakes and in Southern states such as Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia, according to a Forest Service online map.
The inventory’s release comes as President Joe Biden navigates opposing political pressures over federal forest management: Many members of Congress including some Democrats want to ramp up logging in the name of reducing wildfire risks, while environmentalists hope the inventory will be used to justify new restrictions on the timber industry.
U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands combined have more than 50,000 square miles (129,000 square kilometers) of old growth forests and about 125,000 square miles (324,000 square kilometers) of mature forests, according to the inventory.
That’s more than half the forested land managed by the two agencies, and it covers an area larger than California. Yet officials say those stands of older trees are under increasing pressure as climate change worsens wildfires, drought, disease and insects — and leaves some forests devastated.
Older forests “are struggling to keep up with the stresses of climate change,” said USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment Homer Wilkes. “We must adapt quickly.”
The most extensive old growth forests are dominated by pinyon pines and…
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