Region Archives: US East

This week, Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) filed a new, first-of-its-kind lawsuit that alleges the Forest Service’s ‘timber target’ decisions put the climate at risk, undermine the Biden administration’s important climate goals, and violate federal law. The case, filed on behalf of the Chattooga Conservancy, MountainTrue, and an individual in Missouri, centers around the Forest Service’s failure to properly study the environmental and climate impacts of its timber targets and the logging projects it designs to fulfill them. … Timber targets are not just goals or benchmarks—they are mandatory requirements that drive agency decision-making. Internal Forest Service documents obtained by SELC through the Freedom of Information Act show just how much pressure timber targets put on Forest Service staff.  …If the agencies had conducted studies of the climate impacts of their timber targets, they may have chosen more climate-friendly alternatives …That’s why we are taking the agency to court.  

JACKSON, Miss. – State Foresters are starting to get a better understanding of how the timber industry will be impacted after months of drought conditions. Mississippi saw drought conditions for over six months last year. …“Every time I go home to my farm, it’s worse than the week before,” said Mike McCormick, a timber farmer and president of MS Farm Bureau. …One of the first threats to the industry was pine beetles….The two other factors were overall arid conditions and wildfires. …“We conducted a study over the 33 counties in the southwest part of the state that were hit the hardest with the drought, which was about 13 million acres total. In that study area, we estimate a little over 80,000 acres of pine mortality,” Hicks explained. Despite drought conditions improving, some farmers have lost a significant amount of their investments.

ASHEVILLE – A local coalition of environmental advocates filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and seven of its leaders, alleging that the federal agencies violated laws that require them to consider and disclose carbon impacts when developing timber targets. The plaintiffs are asking the court to halt a logging project in Nantahala National Forest, as part of their demands. …The lawsuit argues that the federal agencies and agents violated the National Environmental Policy Act, which they assert requires agencies to analyze and disclose direct, indirect and cumulative effects of their actions. …“Despite authorizing numerous timber projects each year to meet these targets, the Forest Service has never accounted for the aggregate carbon effects of actions taken to fulfill its timber targets,” the lawsuit reads.

MONTPELIER, Vermont — Farmers and foresters have converged at the Statehouse this year to try to convince lawmakers that Act 250 regulations are holding back the working lands economy. Agriculture and forestry have long anchored local economies in rural Vermont, but experts say the nature of those industries is changing. …Volatility in global markets and industry consolidation have forced the people who work the land to seek out new business models. And those workers say a 54-year-old land-use statute is stunting the evolution needed to keep the agriculture and wood products sectors alive. …Craftsbury Rep. Katherine Sims has introduced a bill that would eliminate Act 250 oversight for accessory on-farm businesses. The legislation would also grant Act 250 exemptions to wood products manufacturers of a certain size. …The House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency and Forestry is scheduled to vote the legislation out of committee this week. 

The logging industry is a big deal in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. As someone who likes forests, this made me feel squirmy on the inside, so I went to camp to learn more about what sustainable forestry actually means here. Along the way, I learned that we’re making some WILD things out of wood. Thanks to Michigan Tech for supporting this video, and many thanks to all of the students I talked to for teaching me about their fields!

The Southern Environmental Law Center, representing five environmental organizations, filed a federal lawsuit last month against the U.S. Forest Service, opposing a proposed timber harvest in the Nantahala National Forest in the far western corner of North Carolina. The site is only 15 acres. But the lawsuit could have dramatic implications for future timber cutting in the region. …Referred to as stand 41-53, along the Whitewater River in Jackson County, the site is part of an area known as the Southside Project. …“The logging risks destroying many, if not all, of the area’s special ecological values identified by Plaintiffs, the State of NC, and the Forest Service,” said the suit. According to the suit, logging and road building will damage rare plant and animal habitats and will degrade the scenic quality of the Whitewater River gorge.

Trees could shed light on some of the most cataclysmic events in the universe, according to a particle physicist at the University of Kansas in the US. Steven Prohira thinks these woody objects could function as radio antennae to spot neutrinos, with forests forming large detector arrays. …Neutrinos are difficult to observe directly because they interact so fleetingly with matter….The idea of trees as radio antennae is not new, dating back to the early 1900s. But it only gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War when the US Army wrapped large magnetic induction coils around trees to improve the audibility of radio signals in the jungle. …Although trees work across a wide range of radio frequencies, Prohira thinks much more work will be needed to explore how they perform at frequencies of interest to tau neutrino detectors, which are higher than those normally used for radio communications.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Russian invasion of Ukraine is affecting human lives and the environment. Essential water sources have been tainted due to infrastructure damage, while widespread deforestation and soil erosion present immediate threats to public health and delicate ecosystems. …Calvin Norman, assistant teaching professor of forestry in the College of Agricultural Sciences, created the series. Norman drew inspiration from an article titled “Ukraine War and the Forests: Visible Damage and Invisible Threats,” published in The Forestry Source newspaper. …Norman emphasized that the damage inflicted on forests will have far-reaching consequences, including soil erosion, water pollution and the depletion of protective shelter belts that safeguard farmsteads and provide wildlife habitats. Of equal concern is the threat posed to forests near the Chornobyl accident site; these trees harbor radioactive material, and their combustion could pollute the air in eastern Europe, endangering human and animal health.

With the state dealing with catastrophic consequences of climate change, the debate around forest management continues as Massachusetts policymakers discuss the best way to maximize carbon sequestration in forests. …In June 2023, Massachusetts formed a Climate Forestry Committee to draft guidelines for forest management. Released on Jan. 12, they detail competing interests of biodiversity, water management, wood production and conservation. Among the guidelines is a recommendation that more areas be designated for passive forest management, allowing nature to regulate itself. …Yet another overarching suggestion in the report proposes management of forests to increase climate resilience, or a forest’s ability to withstand severe weather caused by climate change like flooding, heat waves and drought. This management involves varying levels of human involvement… Scientists and foresters often cite the controlled burn practices of Indigenous people as an example of historical interaction between humans and the environment that increases biodiversity and resiliency.

January’s record high average temperature throughout Maine foreshadows a threat from a new pest that could attack the iconic trees spanning Maine’s southern coast to the mountaintops of Acadia National Park. …southern pine beetles — each about half the size of a grain of rice — can marshall into swarms that attack and tunnel through pitch pines, trees appreciated for their scraggly beauty… They can kill a tree within a few weeks, scientists said, and already have killed thousands of acres of pine forest in the southern U.S. So far, only a couple dozen beetles have been found in Maine, and many of those died off during the cold snap in February 2023. But warming weather is bringing them north from their southern U.S. roots, with the beetle already having expanded to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. …The southern pine beetle favors pitch pines, but it also attacks red pines and jack pines. 

WISCONSIN — An environmental group alleged that a logging operation in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF) has violated its contract by clear cutting sections of the forest and working while the ground is unfrozen. The group called on the United States Forest Service’s (USFS) supervisor for the forest to immediately halt the operation. The timber sale is part of the larger Fourmile logging operation in the national forest. …The groups said they were worried the project was moving forward to maximize profit from selling the timber to pulp markets rather than weighing the value of mature and old growth forests in mitigating climate change. …In the timber sale contract, loggers are not allowed to operate when the ground is unfrozen. …Because of the state’s mild winter, there has not been much snow cover in the forest this year.

BROOKHAVEN, Mississippi — Extreme drought conditions in Mississippi killed approximately 12.5 million trees and over 80,000 acres affected across the state. The Mississippi Forestry Commission released a preliminary survey on pine mortality Thursday.  The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service helped MFC conduct the survey through the Southern Research Station looking at an area of 13,010,098 acres, 2,500,000 acres were made up of pine trees. It is important to note the drought caused stress on the trees and it is likely beetles such as the Southern Pine beetle and Ips beetle attacked stressed trees and killed them. …Garron Hicks, Mississippi Forestry Commission Forest Health Commissioner said the acreage impacted by the drought is growing little by little each day. It is likely there will be more updates to the survey over the next year. 

NORTH CAROLINA — Electric vehicles and renewable energy sources are in their boom era — and that means the need for electricity is higher than ever before. The construction of an expanded energy grid to meet that demand is going to require a lot of raw minerals, metals… and a surprising commodity: lumber. This week, we take a trip to the forests of the Southern Pine Belt where demand for big trees far outstrips the supply and find out what’s being done to prevent a pole-ocalypse. Featuring: Dr. Robert Bardon, Associate Dean for Extension and Professor at the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University; and Ryan Dezember at The Wall Street Journal. 

ALBANY, New York — The mass spectrometer in Rabi Musah’s lab at the University at Albany’s chemistry building is so sensitive that it can pick up the molecular fingerprint of almost anything. It’s not uncommon, for instance, for traces of cocaine, fentanyl or other illicit substances to turn up on currency such as dollar bills, she said. …Musah and Coon aren’t looking for drugs though. ….Instead, they are looking for microscopic specks of wood from endangered trees, which have been illegally harvested. …By using the spectrometer, which identifies the atomic weight of a given molecule — and comparing that with what will be an AI-powered database of various endangered wood species — the two women hope to create a device that businesses can use to make sure they aren’t selling an endangered species. …Deployment of the wood detection system is a year to 18 months away, and eventually they hope to develop a hand-held scanner.

The Northern Forest Region — 26 million acres of woodlands spanning Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and northern New York — is changing due to climate change, invasive insects and other threats. Protecting these ecologically, economically and culturally vital forests will require novel tools and knowledge, prompting new University of Maine research launching this spring. UMaine scientists are conducting six new projects that will help monitor and preserve the Northern Forest and the species that call it home. The research is made possible with $1.4 million from the Northern States Research Cooperative. 

Widespread 20th-century reforestation in the eastern United States helped counter rising temperatures due to climate change, according to new research. The authors highlight the potential of forests as regional climate adaptation tools, which are needed along with a decrease in carbon emissions. ….Before European colonization, the eastern United States was almost entirely covered in temperate forests. From the late 18th to early 20th centuries, timber harvests and clearing for agriculture led to forest losses exceeding 90% in some areas. …About 15 million hectares of forest have since grown sin these areas. …The researchers found that forests in the eastern U.S. today cool the land’s surface by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) annually. The strongest cooling effect occurs at midday in the summer, when trees lower temperatures by 2 to 5 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit)—providing relief when it’s needed most.