- The plan will quadruple timber harvests in the country’s most popular national forest.
- The plan places half of the forest in logging-priority designations.
- The plan targets 65,000 acres of Natural Heritage Areas, the most biologically diverse parts of the forest.
- The plan allows logging on steep slopes, which will result in significant damage, sedimentation, water pollution, and increased risk of landslides.
- The plan authorizes more than 300 miles of logging roads, which will cause increased water pollution, pesticide runoff, invasive species, and habitat fragmentation.
- The plans will increase logging in spruce-fir forests, one of the rarest and most endangered ecosystems in the country.
- The plan also targets rich cove forests, the most biologically diverse forest ecosystems in the country.
- The plan will significantly increase logging in biologically diverse, high-elevation northern hardwood forests near spruce-fir.
- The Forest Plan targets rare and sensitive areas instead of prioritizing previously degraded areas.
- The plan doesn’t properly account for natural disturbance, which are also expected to increase as a result of climate change.
- The plan does not include climate and carbon storage in calculating forest benefits.
- The plan fails to consider the national forest in the context of the broader landscape, as required by new rules. Logging is abundant and accelerating on private lands, but national forests are the most important refuges of rare species and old growth forests.
Protected Areas: F
The plan fails to protect over 101,000 acres of most important conservation and recreation hotspots. More than half of the most popular forest in the country is in highest priority logging designations.
