- - Welcome to the Landscape, your show about America's parks and public lands. I'm Erin Weiss with the Center for Western Priorities in an unseasonably warm Denver, Colorado today. - And I'm Kate Retinger in Salt Lake City, where it also is pretty warm, but the air is clear. So yay for that. Today's episode is a little different than usual. It's a quick check-in with a forest expert on the recent news that the Biden administration is taking steps to protect old growth forests.
Our guest today is Dr. Dominic Dalala, chief scientist at Wild Heritage, a project of the Earth Island Institute. We had Dr. Della on the pod back in June to talk about the Biden administration's efforts to protect old growth forests. At the time, the Forest Service had just released data that it had found more than 32 million acres of old growth forests remain intact on public lands in the United States.
The administration took a big step to protect those trees this week with the announcement that it plans to ban commercial logging in all old growth forests on federal land. Thanks for being here, Dr. Dalala. - Yeah, thanks for having me on your show again. - So, first off, how big of a deal is this announcement? - You know, I think it's really great that the Biden administration has recognized the importance of older forests and the nation's, uh, federal lands.
It's a long time coming, you know, we're down to so little left proportionate to the rest of the forest landscape that has been heavily logged, that these are really the anchor points of biodiversity and clean drinking water and climate stabilization. So they're absolutely critical in how the nation addresses climate change, in addition to getting off of fossil fuels by treating these forests as natural climate solutions.
Now, having said that, while it's an important step forward, there are many questions that are really concerning to me that, that at this point of the announcement, perhaps they have not gone far enough in what's really needed to ensure that these forests are protected for future generations. I'm just not convinced yet. Well, uh, there is language in there about exemptions that allow for quote, ecologically appropriate timber harvest, uh, and end quote.
And, you know, I kind of look at it this way. Uh, I've been to the Louvre in Paris and I would never dream about going in there with a paintbrush trying to fix the Mona Lisa. Why would you need to go into an old forest where the chainsaw thinking it needs to be fixed? There's no cause or reason ecologically for any kind of commercial timber harvest inside these forests. It's can you just restrain yourself and appreciate the beauty and the benefits that we get uniquely from these forests.
They don't need the kind of management that the areas that have already been logged need, which is restoration and a lot of love. All we need to do with these forests is let them do their thing. - So I think that gets up my next question, which was, from what I read about the announcement, it sounds like the Forest Service will still allow thinning for fire control. And it sounds like that's a, that's a problem.
- I I think it is because it's based on this failed policy, uh, writ large that, you know, the agency's throwing, uh, millions of dollars into thinning and fire suppression and yet acres burning are, are, are going up. And it's because the climate change signal is overwhelming anything that's going on the ground.
And so in the process of trying to tame fires, they're putting more emissions into the atmosphere than the fires themselves, which is causing this feedback between extreme fire weather and logged areas. So these are the last places you wanna go and tinker. There are plenty places in the industrial logged areas that need, uh, restoration and better care. These older forests burn in lower fire intensities and act as climate strongholds.
So they don't need the kind of tinkering that the degraded areas are in need of. And yet this is where the priority is. It's misplaced. - So what about controlled burns in these old growth forests? Are there places where there may have been natural wildfire, but for the suppression policies over the last a hundred years?
- Yeah, I think you could do prescribed burning and certainly cultural burning practice from indigenous people would be compatible with forest conservation and the use of in, of, of cultural resources by the indigenous communities, totally in support of that. But we also have got to work with fire for ecosystem benefits under the right conditions when they're not burning or threatening communities.
The only way you're gonna maintain the processes and the functions in these forests is to work with those processes. And we know that when fires burn in these areas, they're kind of a mosaic burn pattern. And we see levels of biodiversity in these burned forests that are comparable to the old growth forests.
So again, no need to tinker, uh, work with wild, uh, land fire for ecosystem benefits, but in cases where you want to introduce fire for some benefits and especially cultural, that's compatible with conservation, I believe. - So switching gears a little bit here. This is the first time the Forest Service has proposed, um, simultaneously revising all 128 of its forest management plans. That's a lot. I mean, even just revising one management plan is a lot .
Um, do you think the government has the resources to do this? - I guess that is yet to be determined , uh, and they're on a fast track, and I hope that in the process of doing this, there's strong enough guidance in there. I, like I said, I've got concerns that there are standards in the amendment that are a little bit stronger than guidance, but even those standards have exemptions, they allow for some logging of old growth on the tongass rainforest in Alaska, which is totally unacceptable.
They really need to be shifting all of the logging out of old growth and into secondary forests that already have been logged previously. There's no need for that exemption. There are other exemptions in there that, uh, when you read them on face value, they could be interpreted as way too much discretion for local, uh, forest plan revisions that may not be strong enough on these forest protections.
- So I guess that gets to the question of implementation and how these plans and how this old growth rule will be implemented. Uh, what does that look like, you think over the next year and what does it look like potentially if there's a change of administration at the end of 2024, beginning of 2025? - There's not a lot of time. And so there are really pushing through some, uh, important conservation measures in a very short time space.
And I wish there were more time for this to kind of percolate better, but this is the situation we're in now. And the hope is that through the public comment period and input from scientists, uh, especially independent scientists, they'll be willing to make some changes to tighten that language. Now, whether or not it's lasting, you know, depends on who the next president is and if it's he that shall not be named, uh, all betts are off and it could go completely the opposite direction.
So it's always a risk. You know, I was involved in the roadless conservation rule when President Clinton did that in 2000, and here we are, uh, 23 years later still defending that rule. It, there's been multiple attempts to weaken it and it's still standing. And so my hope is that the Biden administration will adopt a, a mechanism, a policy mechanism that can stand the test of time like the Roadless rule did, despite who the next administration is.
- Well, that seems like a good place to leave it, but I do wanna ask, is there anything else you think folks should know about this news? - Uh, yeah, I think that this is a good first step. It's not strong enough to really kind of lead by example. You know, this administration has done three really important things. They, uh, are part of the Paris Climate Agreement, which includes maintaining stocks of carbon and reservoirs of carbon.
They also signed onto the Glasgow Forest Pledge to end forest losses by 2030. And the president did the 30 by 30 announcement, you know, protect 30% by 2030. I don't think that this language goes strong, is strong enough for any of those pledges and policies. So they really have got the, tighten this up to even be consistent with what the president has laid out previously and to send a message to the rest of the world that, Hey, look at us. We can do this and so can you.
- Awesome. Well, Dr. Dominic Dalala, chief scientist at Wild Heritage, thank you so much for being with us again. - You bet. Thanks again for having me on. - Alright, we are gonna keep this one short today, but we will leave you with a little good news for the holidays, which is that Colorado has officially reintroduced wolves. Colorado wildlife officials captured five wolves in Oregon and flew them to Colorado for release.
The wolves include two juvenile females, two juvenile males, and one adult male. The wolves are expected to immediately disperse from that release site, travel up to 70 miles, and stay on the move for several weeks until they find their new homes. These wolves are the first of up to 50 that are expected to be released over the next three to five years. Colorado parks and wildlife plans to release up to 10 wolves from Oregon between December and March before restarting releases next winter.
This is, as you'll recall, the first voter mandated wolf reintroduction in the United States. - That's right. Best of luck to those wolves. Um, unfortunately their names are things like B 5 92 6, so hopefully folks will come up with some better names for them and we can cheer them on. - You know, I'm, I'm okay with that. It is at the end of the day, science, they're not - . Fair enough. That's all for today's episode.
If you like this quick news analysis format, please let us know at podcast@westernpriorities.org. We could definitely make this a more regular thing. - Thanks again to Dr. DLA Sala for taking time to talk with us. Thank you for listening to the landscape and wherever you are, I hope you have a very happy holiday.