Groups tell Senators: Protect our forests, don’t encourage logging

Environment America joined Earthjustice and other environmental groups in sending a letter to Senators Manchin and Barrasso expressing our concerns about the newly introduced Promoting Effective Forest Management Act of 2022.

Among our concerns, the bill would undermine the goals of President Biden’s Earth Day Executive Order which directed federal agencies to move in the direction of protecting mature and old-growth forests.

The Promoting Effective Forest Management Act of 2022 instead would direct the Forest Service to focus logging activity on “mature forests.” Encouraging the agencies to log these forests would have disastrous ecological and climate impacts as they are some of the most biodiverse and carbon-rich forests managed by the federal agencies.

This legislation woud do nothing to protect the nation’s climate critical mature forests, rather it encourages the federal forest agencies to continue logging them.