Forest Service Needs to Go Big on Climate

Grand Mesa Uncompaghre and Gunnison National Forest, Colorado. Photo credit: Holly Mandarich

Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing our national forests. As part of their efforts to modernize how the agency manages and protects the 193 million acres of forests it oversees, the Forest Service is collecting public comments on how it can protect our national forests from climate change, and help forests fight climate change by storing carbon over the long term. Through an “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking” the agency is weighing major policy changes that could improve how our forests are managed for decades to come.

National forests are deeply important to the outdoor recreation community, who appreciate healthy forests as places to recreate and for their benefits for climate and the environment. While climate change threatens national forests, protecting and carefully managing these forests can also address climate change. Protected forest lands, particularly intact older forests, capture carbon and have many other benefits like clean air and clean water. Outdoor Alliance has advocated for nature-based climate solutions for years as a way to stop climate change while also providing benefits for the outdoor recreation community.

In the federal register, the Forest Service describes how its management policies have evolved over the last century and a half, from “furnishing a supply of timber” in the early twentieth century to balancing “outdoor recreation, range, timber, watersheds, fish, and wildlife with a greater emphasis on accountability to a broader group of stakeholders” starting in the 1960’s. Now, the Forest Service is exploring how changing conditions, including climate change, logging, development, fire suppression, and other stressors, will require them to modernize and change how they manage our national forests.

The current public comment period is part of a larger effort to have public lands and waters be a part of climate solutions, including plans to protect old growth and mature forests, which can be more resilient to wildfire and are a buffer against climate change. Earlier this year, the agency release the first-ever national inventory of old growth and mature forests on national forests and BLM lands, which identified more than 112 million acres as either mature or old growth (around 63% of all forested land managed by the two agencies). With this inventory as a foundation, the Forest Service has an opportunity to make protecting older forests a core component of a climate rule.  

Outdoor Alliance submitted a comment to the Forest Service, which you can read here. To get notified about future comment periods, sign up for action alerts below: