27 February 2025 Policymaking & Advocacy professionals. Solutions do not result from environmental politics that lose the forest for the trees,” said Rex Storm, Executive Vice President, Associated Oregon Loggers. The NOGA’s proposed national forest restrictions would have gutted access to wood, the most sustainable, climatefriendly fiber and building material. This misguided policy would have made forest products more expensive, destabilized rural economies, and crippled the forest sector’s ability to maintain healthy national forests and fight wildfires. This NOGA proposal failed to grasp that modern national forest management and our forestry workforce are the backbone Associated Oregon Loggers welcomed the U.S. Forest Service decision to withdraw on January 7 its National Old Growth Amendment (NOGA) process, an ill-conceived effort championed by out-of-touch environmental politics that threatened to undermine both national forest health and the American economy. Initiated by a 2022 President Biden executive order, the Forest Service was directed to issue a nationwide national forest rule that would reduce old forest harvest and management. Under this White House imperative, the USFS drafted a proposal of shaky legal, ecological and economic grounds, which would further obstruct the agency’s already hobbled forestry. This deeply flawed proposal ignored realities of modern forest management and would have imposed disastrous consequences on Oregon’s rural communities, forestry sector, and the national forest role in addressing carbon and climate. The NOGA process, initiated more than two years ago, was rooted in a misguided agenda to restrict national forest management under the guise of “protecting old growth.” The result would have been a catastrophic chain reaction: suffocating national forest restoration efforts, cutting timber supplies critical for the forest products industry, slashing forestry jobs, removing wildland firefighters, and escalating costs of management projects. These impacts would have worsened conditions in overgrown, unhealthy national forests, leading to more smoke pollution from catastrophic wildfires. “The NOGA withdrawal is a victory for science, common sense, and Americans who understand that solutions to healthy national forests and communities come from modern forestry management and Forest Service Abandons Its Harmful Old Growth Proposal ›By Amanda Sullivan-Astor, Forest Policy Manager of wildfire prevention, forest resilience, and renewable wood fiber. AOL and a vast array of managed forest advocates opposing the NOGA proposal had lobbied against the rule and made voluminous comments to derail the proposal. AOL was among the 300,000 comments received in the summer of 2024. Our two years of opposition paid off. We will continue pushing against future bureaucratic roadblocks created by this now-abandoned policy. AOL supports policies that prioritize forest management science, protect rural livelihoods, and ensure America’s forests are healthy and resilient for future generations. t
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