OPINION: North Carolina’s old-growth forests need your help

by Sam Evans, leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s National Forests and Parks Program

Western North Carolina is lucky to be home to some of the South’s oldest forests. These awe-inspiring places can be hundreds of years old and provide some of the most unique outdoors opportunities in the South. Even those who haven’t visited an old-growth forest have likely reaped their benefit. Old growth filters drinking water for downstream communities, captures climate-warming carbon, and provides home to some of the South’s rarest plants and animals.

On top of all that, they are just plain beautiful.

These remarkable landscapes once covered western North Carolina, but a long legacy of extractive logging and land clearing means there are few remaining areas of old-growth forests left in the state.

And even those pockets of old growth are at risk. The U.S. Forest Service often targets old-growth forests for logging – putting some of the oldest trees in the region on the back of logging trucks in order to reach agency timber targets. The recently signed forest plan for the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests specifically allows logging old growth, and under that plan old growth is being cut right now in the forest outside of Cashiers. The logging of Brushy Mountain, which is part of the highly controversial Southside project, will devastate a centuries-old forest and the animals that rely on it – including the extremely rare green salamander.

But now there is an opportunity to preserve the region’s old-growth forests—and you can help.

This summer, the Biden-Harris administration released a proposal to better protect old-growth forests on public lands. The move would amend forest plans across the country — including the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan — to ensure our oldest forests are managed to preserve their ecosystems, not recklessly cut to meet timber targets. The proposal is a long overdue step toward protecting some of our oldest and most important forests.

And these protections are arguably more important than ever. As a changing climate leads to more flooding problems, increasing temperatures, and stronger storms, old growth provides a straightforward way to fight the climate crisis. Older forests pull climate-warming gases from the atmosphere and store them in their trunks and roots, preventing them from worsening climate change. Incredibly, most forest carbon is stored in the largest 1% of trees. Using these trees as a climate solution is simple: just leave them in the forest.

But even with added protections from reckless logging, these exceptional forests are still at risk. The Forest Service’s own data shows that old-growth forests are facing increasing threats from disease, wildfire, and other disturbances — threats that will grow as the climate continues to change. We must think about what’s next in line to become old-growth forests, not just what is old-growth at this moment in time.

That’s why this new proposal must include a clear strategy for moving our healthiest mature forests toward old-growth conditions. These older ecosystems can help replace old growth forests that have been logged or degraded in the past as well as those that will be lost due to climate stress in the future.

As the administration gets closer to finalizing their proposal, it is asking for the public to weigh in. That’s where you come in. You can comment on the proposal, pushing for the agency to strengthen and move forward with protections for existing old growth and to also recruit future old growth. The small act of submitting a comment can go a long way to ensure North Carolina’s oldest forests aren’t lost.

The deadline for comments is September 20, 2024, and process is easy. Just fill in your contact information and leave your comments in the box. In your comments you can:

• Thank the Forest Service for starting this vitally important process;
• Say why North Carolina’s old-growth forests are important to you;
• Encourage the agency to tighten the loopholes for management in existing old growth forests; and
• Ask for clear, mandatory requirements to prioritize mature forests for stewardship as future old growth, to ensure that old growth will one day again be abundant and resilient.

Once old-growth is destroyed it takes centuries to grow back — if it can grow back at all. If we want future generations of North Carolinians to experience the wonder of old growth, we can’t afford to wait any longer.