On January 7, the Biden Administration announced that it is abandoning its proposed National Old-Growth Amendment. The demise of Biden’s rule has been met with mixed emotions. While we are disappointed that a rule won’t be finalized before Biden leaves office, the draft rule put forward was hardly what we had desired. It left large loopholes in place that would have meant that the rule would be largely symbolic. Still, even if only symbolic, the rulemaking would have been a meaningful statement about the preciousness of old-growth forests. Of course, a decision to pull that rule sends the opposite message.
The decision to pull the amendment did not come with a stated reason, but we suspect that it was a smart political move. With Republicans in control of both houses, it was likely that the rulemaking might be challenged using the Congressional Review Act, under which a bare majority of Congress can overturn a properly promulgated rule. And in doing so, the Congressional Review Act then prohibits the administrative branch from ever attempting a similar rule. Pulling the rule now was a smart move to protect old-growth forests in the long run, as a future administration won’t have their hands tied if they move to issue a new regulation toward this end.
What’s next? EPIC is working on a proposed amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan. As part of that amendment, we will push for protections of old-growth forests, but the reality of a Trump administration tempers our hopes (to put it mildly). The reality of old-growth logging has also fundamentally changed. Through citizen advocacy and litigation efforts by EPIC and other forest defense groups, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have markedly reduced their old-growth logging. And if/when they propose any projects in the future that will remove old-growth, we will be there to defend these priceless forests.
Thank you to the 407 EPIC members who took action to push the Forest Service to complete a robust rule that actually protected mature and old-growth forests early last year.
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