- The plan authorizes cutting over 44,000 acres of existing designated old-growth.
- Over a quarter-million acres of old growth forests are placed in logging-priority designations.
- Twenty percent of the highest-priority logging lands contain known, inventoried old-growth forests.
- The plan opens 300,000 acres of old growth forest to logging and excludes it from the old-growth forest network
- The Forest Service’s old growth and natural disturbance models are inaccurate, built on misleading assumptions, and fundamentally flawed.
- The Forest Service intentionally removed protections and consideration for all small patches of old growth forest in the Pisgah-Nantahala, resulting in thousands of acres of old growth forest now in highest priority logging designations.
- The plan violates rules by not evaluating the national forest in the broader landscape, which is dominated by young forests and lacking old-growth.
- Less than 1% of old0growth remains in the Eastern United States, and nearly all of it is found on public lands.
- The plan’s so-called old-growth forest network includes mostly young forest and actually excludes known, existing old-growth.
- The plan fails to evaluate the climate and carbon benefits of protecting mature and old-growth forests, which store the most carbon of any terrestrial ecosystem.
Protected Areas: F
The plan fails to protect over 101,000 acres of most important conservation and recreation hotspots. More than 62% of the most popular forest in the country is in highest priority logging designations.
