A link in Nick Smith’s email today goes to a press release about the USFS’s Climate Action Tracker, which I have not yet explored. The release also mentions “A revised Mature and Old growth Definition and Inventory revised report released today has new charts that include lands managed by both the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service.”
From the exec summary:
Based on the working definitions used in this initial inventory, Forest Service and BLM lands collectively contain 33.1 +/- 0.4 million acres1 of old-growth and 80.8 +/- 0.5 million acres of mature forest. Old-growth forest represents 19 percent and mature forest another 45 percent of all forested land managed by the two agencies. This initial national-scale inventory was conducted by applying the old-growth and mature working definitions to Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) field plot data.
Like all of the Nation’s forests, old-growth and mature forests are threatened by climate change and associated stressors. The initial inventory and definitions for old-growth and mature forests are part of an overarching climate-informed strategy to enhance carbon sequestration and address climate-related impacts to forests, including insects, disease, wildfire risk, and drought. Initial inventory results will be used to analyze threats to these forests, which will allow consideration of appropriate climate-informed forest management, which is also required by E.O. 14072.
Here’s a table from the OG report, “Pacific Northwest Region, Northwest Forest Plan area old-growth forest types and minimum threshold for old-growth status.”
https://forestpolicypub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/OG-Table.jpg
Using this criteria, the 120-year-old Doug-fir stand on my Oregon property qualifies as old-growth.
Hi Steve: I think they’re saying that an immature second-growth Douglas fir can be “old-growth” only if there is at least one snag for every acre of your property and you have left a lot of firewood laying around on the ground. It’s personally disturbing to see my tax dollars continuously being used for this nonsense, and somehow having it represent “science.”
For most of the past century, old-growth Douglas fir had to be at least 200 years old (many would argue older), and snags and dead wood were seen as fire hazards. The Labor Day Fires should have helped these modelers and rule-makers better understand their lack of knowledge on the topic, but nope.
I have several snags and plenty of large downed woody debris — trees killed in a fire in the early 1900s that have fallen. So I easily meet the minimum requirement for old-growth, Say, maybe that will increase my property value!
Maybe some carbon credits?
I’d only qualify for carbon credits if I scaled back planned harvests, so the CO2 would be additional to the business-as-usual baseline. I harvest only the trees that die of the root diseases prevalent in the area…
Carbon credits? That’s funny; we’ve got several hundred acres of forestlands that we’ve looked at carbon credits for investment. Not much management can occur when you lock up a contract that pays $15.00/acre/year. Using the USFS I-Tree program for planting gives the fully adjusted value on a 40 year, 40 acre plantation I’m planning at approximately $112,00/year! Credits are really laughable; no real guidance, nor quality control/oversight that I can find.
200, or 300 acres of middle aged pine could be put in credits, but not for that piddly amount….. I’ll thin and hold for final harvest..
I think it will probably decrease your property value. All those dead trees and coarse woody debris (“CWD”) are an obvious fire hazard, and all of the mills that could handle old-growth have largely gone out of business.