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Sunday, November 24th, 2024

Despite Biden’s Promise to Protect Old Forests, His Administration Keeps Approving Plans to Cut Them Down

Author:     April Ehrlich, , McKenzie Funk, and Tony Schick
Source:     ProPublica | Oregon Public Broadcasting
Publication Date:     Nov. 12, 2024 | 6 a.m. EST
 Link: Despite Biden’s Promise to Protect Old Forests, His Administration Keeps Approving Plans to Cut Them Down
Stephan:  

I have hiked and backpacked in the wonderful old forests described in this report, and consider the devastation being done to them reported in this piece as evil and to the detriment of the wellbeing of the planet and the matrix of life. What is happening to these forests is an example of what is wrong with the United States. The Founders, for all their racial problems, basically had in mind a democratic republic that fostered wellbeing. Instead, what we have become is a country with only one social value and priority: greed and the profit it produces.

To give access to loggers within the Blue and Gold project area, the BLM plans to improve “existing roads” like the one pictured here, which would include clearing underbrush and potentially cutting trees. Credit: Leah Nash, special to ProPublica

Reporting Highlights

  • Earth Day Promise: In 2022, President Joe Biden announced a new effort to protect old forests, which are key to the fight against climate change. But it hasn’t made much of a difference.
  • Logging Continues: The Bureau of Land Management has allowed timber companies to cut these forests at a faster pace since Biden’s executive order than in the decade that preceded it.
  • Legal Battles: Conservation groups keep suing over what they claim are rushed timber sales, and they keep winning — but under a Trump administration, they may be unable to keep up.

On Earth Day in 2022, President Joe Biden stood among cherry blossoms and towering Douglas firs in a Seattle park to declare the importance of big, old trees. “There used to be a hell of a lot more forests like this,” he said, calling them “our planet’s lungs” and extolling […]

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