How Your National Forests Can Help Mitigate Climate Change
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics
www.fseee.org| Contact: |
Andy Stahl
541-484-2692
andys@fseee.org
|
Our 192 million acres of public forests have the potential to increase their storage of climate-changing greenhouse gases by 43%—an effect equal to removing 13 to 24 million cars per year from our nation’s roads.
Removing carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, from the air is what forests do better than any other ecosystem on earth. In the United States, the best carbon storers are the temperate rainforests found from southeast Alaska (the iconic Tongass National Forest) through British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and into California (e.g., the famous Redwoods).
To realize the potential of our National Forests to ameliorate climate change, we must modernize the U.S. Forest Service’s governing law, the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act. This 1960 law directs that National Forests be managed for “outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes.”
As it is presently written, the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act provides no legal basis for the Forest Service to manage National Forests to reduce global warming. Without clear legal authority directing the Forest Service to make carbon sequestration a priority, it is unlikely our public forests will be administered with that goal in mind.
First, we must amend the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act to make the mitigation of climate change as our first priority for federal forests. Working together, we can make this critical legislative change in the new Congress. Doing so will require that we educate members of Congress on the very real threats posed by climate change. Hard as it is to believe, many of our legislators still don’t get it.
Second, we will mobilize Forest Service scientists to become more active in making the case for change. They have the knowledge essential to recommend sound National Forest policy. With a new administration, now is the time for public employee scientists to speak out about the ability of public forests to sequester carbon.
Third, we must explain to Congress and the American people the important role our National Forests can play in the global climate. This requires synthesizing the scientific literature and converting these studies and data into policy action.
Another management tool that can help put carbon sequestration front and center for National Forests is the Northwest Forest Plan. It protects more than 8 million acres of ancient forests in three states-—forests that store more carbon per acre than anywhere else on Earth.
Just like the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act, the Northwest Forest Plan, would greatly benefit by the addition of carbon sequestration to its directive. By law, the Plan requires revision on or before its 15th anniversary, which is this year. Such a revision will provide the solid footing necessary to make a new Northwest Forest Plan that is responsive to the environmental needs of the 21st century.
It will take a multitude of protective measures to mitigate a changing climate. We need to revolutionize our transportation. We need to stop building new coal-fired power plants. And much more. But reorienting National Forest policy is an important step in the right direction. It is achievable politically and it can be done at little or no taxpayer cost. No other climate mitigation measure is so attractive and immediately realizable.
