PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • November 7, 2022
In September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced grants to timber owners and producers to “improve” forest management, including $30 million awarded to New England. Despite the messages about climate change, this money isn’t for protecting forests; it’s to cut them down. We all use wood products, just as we all use electricity, but “Climate Smart Forestry” lives up to its hype about as well as “Clean Coal.” Despite its trendy greenwashed label, the success of lumber and wood-products in storing carbon fails miserably to measure up to what living trees do. When left alone, eastern U.S. forests become a carbon sink of global significance. When trees are cut, carbon accumulation comes to an abrupt halt. Much of the stored carbon is immediately lost to the atmosphere, and it will take generations for the debt to be repaid. Let our trees grow old. ~ Zack Porter, Standing Trees, and Joan Maloof, Old-Growth Forest Network