Appalachian old growth recklessly put on the chopping block
It’s just after sunrise in North Carolina’s Nantahala National Forest, and Buzz Williams is standing on a dirt road near the South Carolina border that leads to Brushy Mountain. The area is home to hiking trails, trout streams, and a nearby patch of old-growth forest.
“These trees up there were saplings when George Washington was president of the United States,” Williams explained.
Williams is the co-founder and former executive director of the Chattooga Conservancy, and has been visiting Brushy Mountain for decades. But now, a gate blocks the entrance and an ‘area closed’ sign threatens potential trespassers with fines or prison. The warnings come as the mountain’s centuries-old trees are being cut down and put on the back of logging trucks, making Brushy Mountain yet another point of conflict in the fight to save the nation’s oldest forests.
“This area of old growth is where the rubber meets the road,” Williams said.
Brushy Mountain will continue to be logged over the coming weeks, a devastating outcome that was fiercely fought. And one that should never have happened, except for misguided Forest Service policies that drive old growth logging. SELC and our partners have sued over these backward incentives that encourage reckless logging projects like this one.
Old growth on the chopping block
There’s no question about the many benefits that old-growth forests like the one on Brushy Mountain offer: they filter water for downstream communities, provide unique recreation opportunities, and create habitat for rare and endangered plants and animals. Maybe most notably, old-growth forests offer a straightforward solution in the fight against climate change by absorbing and storing climate-warming carbon.
Brushy Mountain’s location makes it especially important. The area is bordered by the Ellicott Rock Wilderness Area to the south, Terrapin Mountain to the north, and the Chattooga Wild and Scenic River to the west.
“That little patch of trees up here, because of its location on the landscape, is one of the most important old-growth forests around here,” Williams said.
Brushy Mountain is also home to the green salamander, an incredibly rare species that’s listed as a threatened species in North Carolina. A breeding rock for the salamander is right in the middle of the area set to be logged.
“For years, SELC and our partners have warned the Forest Service about the irreversible damage logging here will do to this ecosystem, rare animals, and the climate,” Patrick Hunter, Managing Attorney of SELC’s Asheville Office, said. “The agency has continually ignored those significant concerns and is instead plowing ahead with a reckless project that puts this exceptionally important place on the chopping block.”
So why is the Forest Service logging an area with centuries-old ecosystems and habitat for rare animals? Williams, a former Forest Service employee himself, says it comes down to one thing.
“It’s all about timber targets.”
The impact of timber target decisions
Each year, the Forest Service and Department of Agriculture set timber targets, which Forest Service staff are required to meet. To hit its mandated targets, the Forest Service and its contractors log hundreds of thousands of acres of national forests each year.
There’s no question that timber targets drive logging decisions on national forests.
Patrick Hunter, Managing Attorney
Internal Forest Service documents recently obtained by SELC through the Freedom of Information Act show that the agency is planning to increase its already-high timber targets in the next two years, raising the target from 3.4 billion board feet in fiscal year 2024 to 3.75 billion board feet in 2025 and 4 billion board feet in 2026. Laid end to end, that is enough lumber to circle the globe more than 30 times.
The Forest Service rarely discloses the effect of timber targets on logging decisions, instead publicly justifying projects—as it did at Brushy Mountain—based on other objectives. But Forest Service documents show that the agency has been counting on timber from the project which includes the Brushy Mountain logging to satisfy its timber targets.
“There’s no question that timber targets drive logging decisions on national forests,” Hunter said. “The targets incentivize the Forest Service to design logging projects that will produce high timber volumes which often means cutting old, biodiverse, carbon-dense forest that are worth far more standing.”
These continually increasing targets prevent the Forest Service from fulfilling other widely supported priorities. For example, internal agency documents show that the binding targets interfere with the agency’s ability to conduct “basic maintenance,” “keep trails opened and maintained,” and “respond to needs resulting from catastrophic events (e.g. fire) in a timely manner” because the agency is forced to spend limited resources on timber target achievement.
“Our national forests would be better managed if Forest Service officials were free to make land management decisions without the dictates of crude, antiquated timber targets set by higher-level decisionmakers,” Hunter said. “The targets are a disaster for the climate and harmful to the national forest values people cherish.”
Stopping the next Brushy Mountain
While logging on Brushy Mountain has unfortunately already begun, SELC and our partners are working to prevent the next Brushy Mountain.
SELC, on behalf of the Chattooga Conservancy, MountainTrue, and an individual in Missouri, sued the Forest Service earlier this year over the agency’s failure to study the impacts its timber target decisions have on the climate and our national forests. That case is pending in federal court.
And even though timber targets are the driver behind the tragic loss of old growth forests on Brushy Mountain, they aren’t the only problem. There is no federal law or policy prohibiting logging old growth, and, in North Carolina, local Forest Service leaders recently signed a forest management plan that allows logging old growth without even surveying for old trees first.
SELC has sued over the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan for its failure to protect rare habitats and is also supporting a proposed federal policy change that would finally offer some long-overdue protection for old growth.
“It sadly may be too late to save Brushy Mountain, but we hope it can bring more attention to the harm that timber targets do to our public lands and the need to better protect our oldest and most important forests,” Hunter said.