Trump Move to Strip Old-Growth Forest Protections Threatens Carbon Stores

The administration has announced it will roll back a 2023 rule that identified and protected old-growth and mature forests across roughly 193 million acres of national forest land. The rule had directed the Forest Service to inventory these ecosystems and consider their conservation in management decisions — a first-of-its-kind federal recognition that old-growth forests are a distinct resource requiring active protection.

The trade-off is direct: old-growth forests store disproportionately large amounts of carbon relative to younger stands, and their removal triggers emissions that reforestation takes decades to offset. Timber industry interests argue that active management — including logging — reduces wildfire risk, and that federal land-use restrictions cost rural economies jobs. But ecologists counter that high-intensity logging of old growth increases long-run fire risk by removing moisture-retaining canopy and replacing it with dense, dry young growth. The administration cannot have both outcomes simultaneously.

The key question is whether the rescission survives legal challenge: environmental groups are expected to argue the rollback violates the National Forest Management Act's requirement to protect biodiversity. Watch whether individual national forests retain discretion to protect their own inventoried old-growth stands — or whether the rollback removes that floor entirely.