The Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont is one of two national forests in New England, and it's known for its dramatic fall foliage where sugar maples, beech and birch appear ablaze with red, orange and yellow.
Created in response to uncontrolled logging in the first half of the 20th century, the 400,000-acre national forest is home to abundant wildlife including beavers, moose and black bears. The Appalachian Trail runs through this forest, as do eight designated wilderness areas and two national recreation areas. Some 70 million people live within a day's drive of Green Mountain, making it one of the most visited national forests in the United States.
A proposed logging project would cut down as much as 14,270 acres. More than 130 stands older than 100 years are targeted, some with trees 160 years and older. Logging in the project area would harm the endangered northern long-eared bat and disrupt other imperiled and sensitive species that depend on this unfragmented landscape, including martens, Blackburnian and cerulean warblers, and scarlet tanagers.
Older forests such as these make up 36% of all forests in the continental United States and stretch across 167 million acres. Some trees are 80 to 100 years old, while others have stood for millennia.
Mature forests in our country's national parks are largely protected from logging. But more than three-quarters of forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management -- which make up the majority of federally managed forests -- don't have strong protections from logging.
We can't afford to chop down our forests. They shelter wildlife and they shelter us from the worst impacts of climate change by absorbing carbon from our atmosphere.
