Deforestation in the White Mountains fuels the fight for carbon in forests

For decades The dispute has gained new momentum as the planet struggles to cut global-warming emissions and the effects of climate change become more visible.

In New Hampshire, environmental activists are now suing over a 3,000-acre logging project White Mountain National Forest northeast of Mount Washington and south of Gorham. They argue that logging there will release too much carbon dioxide at a time when humanity should be doing the opposite.

The forest farm argues that felling and leasing the forests growing in these areas will eventually absorb as much carbon dioxide as the standing trees leave to fend for themselves.

Earlier this year, the Forest Service approved cutting 2,200 acres of forest in the Peabody West section of the White Mountains National Forest for “high-quality” timber products, wildlife habitat and recreational areas such as mountain bike trails. and roads Technically, the project can start any time the contracts are put out to tender. Unlike protected US national parks and wilderness areas, national forests are designated by the government for “multiple uses,” including recreation and logging.

The Peabody West neighborhood (named for the river that feeds the neighborhood) is dense and mature. At this time of year, the forest floor is covered with leaves with a red shade of maple. The trees here are adjacent to the protected nature of the Great Bay.

Environmentalists say the region has old-growth trees, which New England lacks, and which are most valuable because the trees store huge amounts of carbon.

“We have so much more accessible, younger forest that we can harvest,” Zach Porter said as he walked through the area slated to be logged and pointed to old trees. “Targeting timber harvesting in such a place is simply not appropriate.”

Porter runs a relatively new Vermont nonprofit called Standing Trees, the group that filed the lawsuit in May over logging on behalf of its New Hampshire members. The plaintiffs, represented by the Vermont Law and Graduate School Environmental Clinic, hope to convince a judge to issue an injunction to halt logging on both that site and the other 880 acres near Lake Tarleton and east of Piermont.

Forests are widely recognized international climatologists incredibly important for absorbing planet-warming emissions. During photosynthesis, trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which mitigates climate change.

The Forest Service wrote in a carbon estimate for the project that any emissions from logging would be “balanced and possibly eliminated as the stand recovers and regenerates.” The theory is that reforestation will, over time, allow the trees to retain more carbon than before they were cut.

The agency also wrote that logging increases the health and age diversity of an area, which will help the forest resist the effects of climate change, including an increase in pests and diseases.

The Forest Service is not commenting on the project because it is pending litigation. Scott Owen, the agency’s national press officer, wrote in a statement that overall, “We understand that ‘deforestation’ as a boogeyman is a common and historic theme. However, the more pressing threat this century is (drought, forest fires, disease and insect outbreaks).”

In the short term, logging will lead to greenhouse gas emissions, the Forest Service has acknowledged in public documents. But the agency found in environmental assessment that the overall effect would be “negligible” compared to global emissions.

One forest expert, Jonathan Thompson of Harvard Forest, called the conclusion “hollow” because virtually any amount of carbon dioxide is small compared to the total amount of carbon.

Jamie Sayen, a historian, author and longtime environmentalist in New Hampshire’s north country, said the argument that felled trees will eventually grow back to hold the same carbon as before is “absolutely absurd.”

“The crisis is now,” Sayen said. “Putting more carbon into the atmosphere now, because sometime in the next 100 years it will be taken back out, is not a good strategy.”

“Old-growth” trees and habitat are a particularly hot topic of debate among foresters and ecologists. Since European colonization, New England’s forests have been aggressively logged, first for agriculture, then for paper mills, later for cities and suburbs, and most recently for biomass energy. Forests often, but not always, grew back again and again.

This legacy left the White Mountain and Green Mountain National Forests with less than 1 percent of “old growth” trees, compared to an average of 10 percent in national forests across the United States. Definitions of old age are differentbut usually in the east it means trees at least 101 years old.

According to the Forest Service’s 2021 fieldwork report, several trees included in the Peabody West area study were about 300 years old, and some of the area could be considered “old-growth habitat.”

The Standing Trees lawsuit came at a turning point for the Service’s management of old trees. In 2022, President Biden directed the Forest Service to conduct inventory and conservation mature and old-growth forests on federal land, an effort seen as a way to preserve the nation’s carbon sinks.

Statewide, the amount of carbon stored in New Hampshire is trending in the wrong direction, largely due to forest loss. Although about 80 percent of the land in New Hampshire is forested, an estimated 400,000 acres have been lost since 1970, the current peak.

In northern New Hampshire, however, the commitment to wood is strong.

“We believe in forest management,” said Michael Woddell, who serves on the Board of Selectmen in Goreham, where the economy has long depended on tourism and timber. He said national forest lands need to be used responsibly for multiple purposes, not just for conservation.

“We’re not here to grow a million acres of forest into Sequoia National Park,” Waddell said, referring to the popular California park known for its old-growth trees.

Waddell, an outdoor enthusiast, has dismissed a lawsuit trying to stop the Peabody West logging project. To him, it just seems like a new way to argue that people shouldn’t use wood, adding that the climate change argument is “tiring” and is now “throwing itself around everything people want to do in the forest.”

Forestry experts also argue that this issue is complex. Oleksandra Kosiba, a forest ecophysiologist and associate professor of forestry at the University of Vermont, said logging can improve an area’s biodiversity by creating space for new trees to grow.

Logging in New England is also more responsible today than it used to be, she says, with huge clear-cuts gone. Modern “treatments” – especially on public lands – are more targeted. Harvesting wood from regulated lands can also be better than buying it from places with little protection, she said.

“There’s a lot of oversight in New England,” Kosiba said. “That’s not the case in many other parts of the country and certainly in other parts of the world.”

Still, Thompson, director of research at Harvard Forest, said when it comes for old trees, the math isn’t difficult: for example, if it took 100 years to grow a tree, it will typically take another hundred to replace what’s left carbon.

Thompson emphasized that overconsumption is a key point missing from most of the forest carbon debate. about 38 percent of wood harvested in the United States is used for non-durable paper products. Without reducing human consumption of wood, stopping logging in one place may simply redirect logging elsewhere, he said.

“And in terms of the atmosphere, nothing is different,” Thompson said.

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Erin Douglas can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @erinmdouglas23.