American Forest Resource Council president Travis Joseph responded to the Biden Administration’s announcement on policies relating to mature and old-growth forests on federal lands in a news release.

Said Joseph in response to the Biden Administration’s announcement:

“This announcement and year-long effort confirms what we’ve known: we’re not lacking old growth, we’re lacking common sense in stewarding our forests.  Our national forests and old growth are dying and burning up because we’ve neglected to take care of them for decades.  The impacts are obvious to Americans living in the West: polluted air from wildfire smoke, degraded drinking water, eviscerated landscapes and communities, and lost opportunities to enjoy our public lands.

“Some special interest groups in the Pacific Northwest are promoting the old way of thinking: walking away and doing nothing will save our forests.  The science, data, and our lived experience demonstrates the old way is failing our old growth, forests, and communities.  The answer is obvious to everyone but anti-forestry groups focused on conflict: we need to take immediate action to thin our forests and reduce carbon-emitting mega fires, to reforest what we’ve lost to wildfires, and transition to using more renewable wood products that store carbon.”

The Biden Administration report is in response to an executive order last year at this time calling on federal agencies to conduct an inventory of old-growth and mature forests, assess threats and develop a plan to apply nature-based solutions to mitigate climate change.

You can read the entire AFRC release here.