This webpage was created by the Forest Carbon Coalition to provide you with real, up-to-date science, data-driven information, and arguments to combat the disinformation around forestry in the U.S.
If you would like to get in touch with a subject matter expert to talk about any of the key topics or generic information provided on this webpage, please e-mail us and we will connect you to the best indicated person.
Articles, in addition to suggested further readings and graphic support, will be added each week as they are released.
This graphic, taken from Nunery, J. S., & Keeton, W. S. (2010) peer reviewed article "Forest carbon storage in the northeastern United States: Net effects of harvesting frequency, post-harvest retention, and wood products" published in Forest Ecology and Management (259(8), 1363–1375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2009.12.029) clearly shows that the most effective from of carbon sequestration occurs when we leave the forests alone.
Click on the Nature Creative Commons Logo to watch Old Forests - the real climate heroes. A beautiful 14 minute video which shows why intact forest ecosystems are the most valuable asset we have and why we need to protect them for future life on earth.
America’s forests are under siege. More than 80% of forestlands in the US are degraded by development and rampant logging on private, state, and federal lands. In the lower 48, that figure is closer to 95%. Thriving forest ecosystems have been paved over for urbanization and industry; many have been replaced with monoculture tree plantations for timber and biomass production; others have been intensively logged and fragmented with roads for logging or traffic. These disruptions to forest ecosystems can increase their susceptibility to pests, diminish their ability to support diverse wildlife, and reduce their capacity to provide vital resources such as clean air, water, and fertile soils. Despite these ongoing challenges, federal and state forestry policies continue to treat forests like a crop, often overlooking the long-term negative effects on human and planetary health.
Dynamic forest ecosystems have the power to stabilize our weather, protect us against floods and wind storms, limit the extent of the biodiversity extinction crisis, and prevent the decline of ailing rural communities. Congress must halt the billions of dollars wasted in subsidies and incentives for cutting down these forest ecosystems, when the easiest and cheapest solution is to leave the forests standing and let them continue to do their important jobs. No matter who is in the White House, the pace and scale of logging is continuing to accelerate under false pretenses like the carbon neutrality of burning trees for energy, or the claimed need to log for fire risk reduction, or create habitat for game species, or create jobs.
Not the American people, but large international conglomerates benefit from clearcutting U.S. forests. These massive corporations log our forests to burn them for energy abroad and for timber products, while government agencies receive a cut to fund bloated bureaucracies. This 12-article series has been prepared by members of the Forest Carbon Coalition to set the record straight and provide legislators, agencies, and the public data about the real cost of industrial logging to the American people and rural economies, including the harmful impacts to climate stability and biodiversity on which we all depend.
Why Logging Isn’t the Answer to
Mitigating Wildfires or Climate Change
The weight of scientific research is telling us we cannot overcome the current and future impacts of our changing climate solely by shifting away from fossil fuels and toward a clean energy economy. Instead, we must also dramatically increase protection of native ecosystems, like forests. When such protections are focused on allowing forest ecosystems to grow, with their resilience fortified by natural processes so these natural carbon sinks can better absorb and draw down the alarming excess of carbon in our atmosphere, this is called “proforestation”.
Unfortunately, in recent years, a dangerous narrative has developed among some on the political left and right, which we’ve named the “overgrown forests myth”. Its proponents would have us believe that our forests are unnaturally dense, ostensibly due to lack of “forest management” (aka logging) or too much fire suppression, and that forests are therefore burning unnaturally severely. As a solution to this assertion, they then propose massive, landscape-level removals of carbon from our forests through logging, under the rubric of euphemisms like “fuel reduction”, “thinning”, “restoration”, and “forest health”. Not only is this narrative a huge step in the wrong direction with regard to our climate, and guaranteed to waste tax dollars and destroy native biodiversity, it is also based on scientifically inaccurate information.
Natural Regeneration after a high intensity wildfire. June 2021, Rim Fire
Please click on the image above to read up on the true science about fire, courtesy of the John Muir Project.
Click on the image above to read a report on America's Tattered Forests by the Forest Carbon Coalition.
Here is a current list of massive logging projects compiled by the Climate Forest Campaign.
One of Big Timber’s most audacious pieces of disinformation is that logging is climate neutral and that federal, state, and local policies should be aligned to promote its products over its competitors. To this end, Big Timber has been successful at getting Congress and state legislatures to declare that burning trees for energy is climate neutral and that wood products are an important climate solution. This is corporate gaslighting at its worst, reminiscent of the ways Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and other corporate conglomerates work to deny the science and avoid regulation. The reality is that industrial scale logging is a cause and not a cure for climate change for three basic reasons.
First, the economic process of logging and wood products manufacturing emits major amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Trees are half carbon by weight, and when they are cut down and turned into two by fours, paper, or wood pellets, nearly all of this carbon is released into the atmosphere. In addition to this biogenic release (from the trees themselves) is the carbon released when fossil fuels are combusted to build logging roads, power logging equipment, fuel log trucks and supply energy to industrial mills. All this makes conventional wood products very carbon intensive. If annual carbon inventories included industrial logging, it would be the leading source of GHG emissions or near the top in every state subject to widespread logging activities.
Older forests are vital ecosystems that offer a myriad of health benefits, both for the environment and human beings. These woodlands, often referred to as “nature’s pharmacy,” serve as sanctuaries for physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Their ecological significance extends beyond mere biodiversity; they play a crucial role in carbon sequestration, provide medicinal resources, and foster holistic health practices.
One of the most significant benefits of America’s forests is their ability to sequester carbon. As trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, storing carbon in their biomass and soil. This carbon-rich environment is essential for combating extreme weather events, as it helps to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. In addition to their role in climate regulation, older forests are rich in phytochemicals—natural compounds that possess various biomedical properties. For instance, old trees produce unique chemicals that can benefit human health, contributing to the development of pharmaceuticals and supplements.
(Credit: Wikimedia commons)
Witch Hazels (Hamamelis virginiana) grows naturally in the forests. Its leaves and bark are used for skincare, medicinal purposes and as an herb since ancient times.
Please click on the image above to watch a 4-minute short by Maya Khosla, about the Monster on the Horizon, a new biomass project by Golden State Natural Resources which threatens California's and Oregon's forests.
Burning trees (woody biomass) is one of the most wasteful and harmful ways to generate energy. We are devaluing American forests when we log trees and either burn them to produce inefficient electricity and heat, or allow them to be processed at polluting facilities into wood pellets, which are then shipped overseas to the U.K., Europe, Japan, Korea and other countries, to be burned for energy. Sacrificing our forest ecosystems and all that they provide including community flood, wind, and fire protection, clean air, clean water, recreation opportunities, and habitat for native wildlife, to enrich a few corporations and produce dirty energy is simply unconscionable. Yet in 2023 the U.S. was the largest exporter of wood pellets, shipping 9.54 million metric tons, to the U.K., Japan and Europe, while Canada, the next biggest exporter of wood pellets, exported just under 3.5 million metric tons. Unfortunately, those numbers are likely to rise.
Recent opinions, news coverage, and a March 1st, 2025 Executive Order aim to fill our cities with tall wooden buildings. This presents not a stirring vision of sustainability but a nightmarish scenario of a land base increasingly scarred by clearcuts, logging roads and small diameter tree plantations at a time when climate science insists that reestablishing natural forests and letting them grow much bigger and older is one of humanity’s last best hopes to keep climate change from accelerating out of control. To save our climate and keep our nation secure, we need taller trees, not taller wooden buildings.
There is one overriding reason for this – that conventionally produced mass timber products are significantly more carbon intensive than many substitutes and should not be promoted as a matter of public policy. For every ton of carbon stored in wood buildings many more are emitted along the way. Peer reviewed studies across the world have calculated a tight range of carbon intensities – about 3 to 9 tons of CO2 equivalent for every ton of wood product. The carbon intensities suggested by this research should be a cause for concern for anyone promoting the idea of more logging and tall wooden buildings as climate solutions.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Detail of a multilayer glued wood panel (cross laminated timber) made from three layers of pine by Rain A. Dimitrievich.
Click on the Picture to read the World Resources Institute's take on wood as building material.
Image above, courtesy of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
FERN has a good analysis of Offsets here
Carbon offsets are hailed by many polluters as a way to raise private funds that allow us to protect forests so they can continue to sequester carbon. However, the flaws of the carbon offsets mechanism, and the forestry practices that offsets cover, make them unsuitable for this critical task.
The idea of using carbon offsets to curb emissions became popular in the 1990’s. Each carbon offset certificate sold to polluters supposedly represents the additional and permanent reduction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide or equivalent (CO2e), over and above business as usual. However, a wide variety of investigations have found these claims to be clearly false or impossible to substantiate. The reality is that offsets allow corporations to greenwash their operations by paying a relatively small fee, (as low as $1/tCO2) for an “offset certificate” which then allows them to claim carbon neutrality despite not attempting to reduce their own emissions. Numerous investigations have exposed fraud - challenging offsets’ popularity. Between 2022 and 2023 the voluntary use of offsets declined from approximately $1.9 billion to $723 million, a 61% drop in response to investigations showing fraud and exaggeration. While many projects were deemed worthless, the claims of carbon neutrality are continuing. A recent investigation by Greenpeace Canada revealed a united front of lobbyists from the powerful logging, mining, agribusiness, and oil interests seeking to promote both “carbon offsets” and “biodiversity offsets” schemes to avoid the higher cost of investing in actual emissions reductions.
A key function of forests is the regulation of the hydrological cycle which drives weather patterns and gives us clean water for drinking, agriculture, fisheries, and more. Forests can attract, direct, and even generate rain, in addition to softening the impact of floods and storms. Water is always on the move through transpiration, condensation, and infiltration, all functions to which forests are essential, helping nutrient cycling, maintaining moisture, and sustaining the biosphere.
When trees pull moisture from the ground and return it into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration, they literally generate rain clouds which are then dispersed by winds. Often, these winds are also generated by the forests as air pressure changes when gases are turned into liquids, moving the air. This process is essential for downwind terrains, cooling temperatures, and maintaining vital atmospheric moisture. Scientists have called this a biotic pump, and likened the process to what our hearts do. In this sense, forests could be considered both the heart and the lungs of our world since forests purify the air as a result of photosynthesis.
Forests also condense water. Studies have found that forests, fungi, and other plants emit terpenes which emit ice nuclei that condense water inside clouds and prompt precipitation. Meanwhile, forest canopies act as an interception point slowing down heavy rainfall and softening the impact on soils, avoiding runoff and soil erosion. The network of roots in a forest act as an anchor for the soil and support permeability, helping avoid direct runoff of pollution into our waterways. Without the intervention of trees, unfiltered water entering our waterbodies can create large “dead zones” such as the one found in the Gulf of Mexico/ America.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons. The Water Cycle, Precipitation Measurement Missions) by N.A.S.A.
Forests are key to the water cycle as they move precipitation through transpiration, condensation, and infiltration. Forests also slow down the water cycle by softening precipitation ("through fall"), avoiding run off, erosion, and excessive sedimentation. In addition, trees anchor the soil through their root systems which also aids permeability and filtering water to replenish clean groundwater. Forests can draw precipitation inland, away from the coastal areas and distribute precipitation more evenly.
Reversing the Resource Curse: Increasing Timber Harvest is not the answer, diversified forestland uses may be.
As the BLM found:" (b)ecause the timber industry has a long national history of high volatility, alternatives with harvest volumes that exceed current levels are likely to introduce higher instability into local economies. based on past business cycles." FEIS for the Western Oregon RMP (2014)
Wherever in the world there are economies too heavily invested in resource extraction, poverty follows like a bad curse. Rural America is no exception in regions where coal, oil, gas and timber are prioritized over other forms of economic development. The “resource curse” as it is known, is a well-studied phenomenon that manifests in these areas in the form of employment volatility, lower median wages, poor health, low educational attainment and a host of social and economic pathologies like domestic violence, addiction, crippling debt, and fiscal stresses on local government. Multidimensional poverty is a catch-all concept that encompasses all of these worrisome conditions, and it is plainly evident in America’s timber towns.
Counties with the highest levels of logging tend to be the counties with higher rates of poverty, lower median wages, and more reports of domestic violence (Figure 2). Because so much of the land is locked up for timber production, there is very little room to create more stable jobs associated with recreation, tourism, non-timber forest products and other uses dependent on diverse forests and diverse uses of those forests. Counties where the timber industry dominates also struggle to pay their bills and provide adequate social services because large logging corporations are mostly exempt from paying their fair share of taxes or footing the bill to repair watersheds, fisheries, roads, or property damaged by logging. In the West, states and counties are also financially stressed because Big Timber does not pay its share of costs for fighting wildfires made so much worse by their timber plantations.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has reported that global forest degradation, caused by logging and other industrial resource extraction and development, could cause the extinction of up to 1 million species in the coming years. This loss of biodiversity threatens the very livability of the biosphere and prompted the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) during the COP 15 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in 2022.
Target #3 of the GBF is also known as the 30x30 target: an ambitious commitment to protect and restore 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal, and marine areas by 2030 to allow native wild species to return to healthy and resilient levels of abundance. The implementation of the GBF is monitored in the United States by the U.S. Geological Survey Agency (USGS).
Presidential Executive Order #14008, issued in 2021, endorsed the 30x30 target, directing the permanent protection of U.S. lands and waters to “tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad.” The Executive Order noted that according to the USGS, only 12 % of lands were permanently protected. This means we only have 5 years left to put permanent legal protections on another 18% of all U.S. lands and waters, especially ecosystems of high ecological integrity such as forests, to halt the worst effects of the climate and biodiversity crises.
Picture Credit: Wikimedia Commons. The effects of Helene in Buncombe County, North Carolina. According to weather.com, the recovery cost is close to $60 Billion.
Climate change is an unprecedented threat to public health and safety. A recent analysis by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries makes this point in a dramatic way. If business as usual continues, the world can expect to surpass 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2050, a 50% contraction of GDP, and 4 billion deaths attributable to the synergistic effects of heat waves, drought, floods, sea level rise, wildfires, severe storms, novel diseases and the social upheavals that accompany these climate disasters. Starvation is of particular concern. The Actuaries found that more than half the suitable land for growing wheat and maize could be lost compared to a world without climate change.
Over the last ten weeks, we have looked in detail at the unquestionable importance of forest ecosystems for the provision of vital ecosystem services. In this article, we look specifically at the importance of eastern forests for current and long-term provision of ecosystem services, their potential for adaptation to rising temperatures and increased moisture, and call out the misguided forest management which is impeding natural adaptation and augmented capacity of eastern forests to provide vital services.
In 2014 United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported that the eastern U.S., with just under 40 percent of the land in the lower 48 states, stores more carbon than the rest of the conterminous United States. This is an estimated 1,100 million tons of CO2 equivalent per year. Around 80% of this carbon is stored in forests making eastern forests the most important terrestrial carbon sink in the country. Any reduction in this sequestration potential is reported only from harvesting and land conversions – mostly for residential developments.
Eastern forests are becoming increasingly moist and dense due to increased precipitation and warming temperatures - they're undergoing "mesophication." This is a desirable trait for increased CO2e sequestration, resistance to fire, and beneficial for biodiversity. Since Eastern forests are mostly under 100 years old, they offer important carbon sequestration potential.
As a child growing up in Hunan Province of southern China, I used to hang out with my Nai Nai (grandma) a lot in the mornings, when my parents were working in the rice paddies. Ye Ye (Grandpa) was the one who would take our water buffaloes out to graze by the riverbank or in the hill. One morning, when Ye Ye came back with our water buffaloes, he came into the house with hard-to-hide joy on his face. He reached into his pocket and produced some mushrooms. The mushrooms were black with a round umbrella shaped cap and true blade gills. Nai Nai cooked a mushroom soup, and we were having rice with the big bowl of soup. I did not eat the soup because it looked like some mysterious dark potion. That’s how I was introduced to mushrooms.
Photo Credit: Unsplash. Meditating in Nature.
We conclude our series by asking that we Keep It In The Forest. The carbon, the trees, the biomass, the fire, the water, the fungi, the mosses, the animals, the insects, the invertebrates, the lichens, bacteria, and so much more that makes a forest ecosystem function. Let objective data and up-to-date science (not profit) guide future forest management decisions. Life on earth as we know it, and the conditions that make human existence possible, depend on it. To ensure the continued provision of vital ecosystem services that maintain a livable biosphere, we plead for the permanent protection of all public U.S. forests from commercial logging and other harmful uses, especially the remaining fragments of native forests wherever they now exist. Funds that are allocated to wasteful and harmful forest management must be redirected to purchasing more forested lands and connecting, rewilding, and permanently protecting fragmented forest ecosystems across the country.
#KeepItInTheForest
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