Old-Growth Forests and Oregon’s Healthy Ecosystems

Oregon’s forests were once full of old-growth, but today, less than 10 percent of old-growth trees still stand, environmental advocacy group Oregon Wild estimates. Despite their essential role in ecosystems and years of controversy over their loss, these forests are often still targeted for logging. 

The National Old-Growth Amendment, open for public comment until Sept. 20, would restrict commercial logging of old growth in every national forest across the country, but it wouldn’t affect old growth managed by the Bureau of Land Management. 

Chandra LeGue, a longtime old-growth advocate for Oregon Wild, says old growth is essential because trees store more carbon as they get older. 

It takes 70 to 80 years of growth for a tree to start storing a level of carbon that’s beneficial to the environment. In the Pacific Northwest, trees are considered old growth if they are more than 150 years old, LeGue says.

“They have all this mass that is essentially carbon,” LeGue says. “It’s taken from gaseous form to wood form.”

The Northwest Forest Plan, which is currently being amended by the U.S. Forest Service, helps protect old growth in the Northwest, but there are no nationwide regulations in place. 

The intended effects of the NOGA are to increase the amount and improve retention of old-growth forests, strengthen conditions that will help old growth adapt to changes in the climate, incorporate Indigenous knowledge in the management of old-growth and develop local management strategies, according to a report from the Forest Service.

The Forest Service and the BLM control 61 percent of Oregon’s forestland as public federal land, according to Oregon Forest Resources Institute, a forest products industry group. 

National forests, which are managed by the Forest Service, make up 48 percent of Oregon’s total forestland. BLM manages the other significant portion of federally owned forests in Oregon.  

The U.S. Forest Service is accepting comments from the public about its draft of the National Old-Growth Amendment until Sept. 20.

After the public comment period is over, the Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of public national forests and grasslands across the county, will make adjustments and finalize the plan before 2025. 

It is estimated to be implemented by Jan. 1, according to the Forest Service.

“What we need to do is look at our forest practices and logging practices, and start to line them up with the real science that has to do with climate,” says Patty Hine, president of climate action group 350 Eugene.

Hine goes out in Eugene twice a month to educate people about current climate issues.

On April 22, 2022, the Biden Administration issued an executive order requiring the Forest Service and other applicable organizations “to pursue science-based, sustainable forest and land management.” 

The order urged them to conserve America’s federal-land mature and old-growth forests, support traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge and cultural and subsistence practices and respect Tribal treaty rights.

“In addition to just storing carbon, if you’ve ever walked down a shady street with trees on it, you know how much cooler it can be,” LeGue says.

Forests mitigate the temperature and cool the water within the forests that eventually come out of our tap, LeGue says. 

The McKenzie River supplies Eugene with its drinking water, which originates at Clear Lake, about 85 miles northeast of Eugene, and travels through Willamette National Forest to reach Eugene. 

The majority of Portland’s drinking water comes from rainfall in the Bull Run Watershed in Mount Hood National Forest, according to the city of Portland.

“Forests that have a healthy understory and rich, deep soils do a much better job of filtering water,” LeGue says. “Which can really impact municipal drinking watersheds.”

As climate change causes summers to get warmer and drought seasons to get longer, older forests will provide more water than younger ones, LeGue says.

Old-growth forests are more resilient to fire, so as climate change increases temperatures and the number of wildfires, old-growth is even more essential for ecosystems, she says.

A small percentage of timber comes from public lands, Sarah Bennett, BLM’s Oregon and Washington spokesperson says. “The vast majority of it is from private lands.”

Thirty-four percent of Oregon’s forests are privately owned.

The BLM manages 16 million acres of public land in Oregon and Washington, and 12 percent of Oregon’s forestland, but doesn’t manage national forests. The agency does its “very best” not to cut down trees that have a diameter larger than 36 inches and that originated before 1850, Bennett says.

In 2020, 14 percent of timber was harvested from federally owned forests, 76 percent of it came from private forestland and 10 percent came from state or county owned forestland, according to Oregon Forest Resources Institute. 

Less than one percent of timber was harvested from Native American tribal forestland, which makes up only two percent of forestland in Oregon.

The NOGA won’t apply to land managed by the BLM because it doesn’t manage national forests, but to comply with the executive order it is creating policy for old-growth on a location-by-location basis, Bennett says.

Logging kills trees, preventing them from storing additional carbon and instead releasing carbon into the atmosphere, LeGue says. 

“Letting the trees grow is really the best thing for the climate,” LeGue says.

Comments on the National Old-Growth Amendment can be submitted on the U.S. Forest Service’s NOGA project website under the “Get Connected” tab.

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