The Northwest Forest Plan is the most important regulation protecting the public forests of the Pacific Northwest. Now, it may be on the chopping block, as the Trump Administration looks to amend it to increase logging. Click here to sign our petition of support for the Northwest Forest Plan.
The Northwest Forest Plan has been a remarkable success. At roughly 30 years into the 100-year plan, the Plan is working as intended. Ecologically, the Plan has broadly accomplished what it was designed to do: protect and develop late-successional forests; protect species closely associated with late-successional forest habitat; ensure that late-successional forests are well-distributed across the landscape in reserves; maintain habitat connectivity through the matrix; and protect and restore spawning and rearing habitat for anadromous fish and riparian and other habitat for aquatic organisms.
It has had the added benefit of being a rare climate change success story by reducing carbon emissions and retaining significant amounts of carbon across an entire region, with most of the carbon stored on federal lands being on those managed under the Plan. Socially, the Plan broke the impasse over forest management and helped to end the “Timber Wars” of the Pacific Northwest. While there are occasional flare-ups, the days of timber truck parades, threats, and violence have passed—so much so that the new generation of forest managers, who have grown up with the Plan, can look back in amazement that these ever existed.
But the Northwest Forest Plan is at risk. The Biden Administration sought to amend the Northwest Forest Plan, and now, the Trump Administration will decide its fate. Not surprisingly, the timber industry is pressuring the Forest Service to weaken the plan and leave more forest for logging.
Succumbing to industry pressure for the sake of short-term profits would be an irreversible mistake. Our mature and old-growth forests are worth more standing—they are critical to halting the biodiversity and climate crises, and any amendments to the Northwest Forest Plan must build upon the protections it provides to our region’s delicate ecosystems and meaningfully incorporate Tribes, which were excluded from the original planning process. Unfortunately, however, the Forest Service’s proposed action would remove important protections for species and ecosystems that the Plan was developed to protect, harming our region’s wildlife, watersheds, and resilience to climate change and wildfire.
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