BURNSVILLE, N.C. — As Western North Carolina’s forests recover from Hurricane Helene, environmental groups say Pisgah and Nantahala face a one-two punch from the federal government, potentially setting the stage for further destruction.

For as long as the country has had national forests, logging has been a part of their management, but those needs are also weighed against the need to maintain habitat, recreational opportunities, protect local water systems and defend wildlife.

In the past few years, the U.S. Forest Service has opened up more land to logging and now with a recent executive order calling for increased timber production across the country, environmental nonprofits like Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Asheville-based MountainTrue are suing to prevent what they believe could severely damage habitat in a way that could take decades to recover from.

In an April memorandum about the executive order, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, emphasized the need to manage national forests to better provide domestic timber, create jobs, decrease the costs of energy and construction and reduce the risk of wildfires.

Josh Kelly, the resilient forest program director for MountainTrue, said he understands those goals and shares them to some extent. However, he believes the nation should also prioritize keeping these forests strong and healthy for the communities that surround them and doing that requires more environmental protections.

“I am all for local wood utilization. I am also all for the spectacular natural values of our national forests and I think there needs to be a balance,” he said.

The lawsuit filed against the U.S. Forest Service argues the current federal plan for Pisgah and Nantahala lacks that balance and is calling for a federal judge to demand the USFS draft a new version.

Initially approved under the Biden Administration, the 2023 Forest Management Plan updated the previous plan, written in 1987 and revised most recently in 1994, and expanded the acreage available for logging in the two forests by about 600 percent.

The USDA declined to answer questions about the Forest Management Plan due to the current litigation, though the agency has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit claiming the nonprofits lack standing and do not have the evidence to demonstrate imminent harm from the current forest plan.

In a statement to WSOC, a USDA spokesperson said: “In alignment with the Secretary’s memorandum, we will streamline forest management efforts, reduce burdensome regulations, and grow partnerships to support economic growth and sustainability. Active management has long been at the core of Forest Service efforts to address the many challenges faced by the people and communities we serve, and we will leverage our expertise to support healthy forests, sustainable economies, and rural prosperity for generations to come.”

In the plan itself, the management decisions are justified by emphasizing the need for more “young forest” or places within the national forests with little canopy and new growth that can support a diverse habitat for wildlife.

Kelly believes the plan’s biggest issue is that it doesn’t take into account an accurate variety of ways young forest can actually be created outside of logging.

“Helene created more young forest in one day than the forest plan predicted all natural events would create in several decades, perhaps over a century,” he said.

According to estimates from the USFS, Western North Carolina lost 822,000 acres of forest after Hurricane Helene. About a fifth of that loss was in the national forests, meaning Pisgah and Nantahala lost enough trees to cover the city of Asheville more than five times over.

Kelly understands blowdowns are natural part of a forest’s lifecycle, and that ecosystems are built to recover, but he fears overlogging and hastily creating roads to get to timber harvests could cause more permanent damage, particularly to local water systems in a forest dense with springs and streams.

“In normal times, the forest plan could have been a back stop against pressure from Washington to abuse our forest. Right now, that’s just not the case,” he said.

Kelly is also skeptical of the claim that increased logging in the national forests could help reduce wildfire risk, at least in western North Carolina.

“I think any discussion about fire and preventing fire needs a lot of nuance and a lot of places that grow the best timber are not the places that burn,” he said. “These wet forests grow the best timber.”

Currently, the USFS has approved salvage operations in a few western counties to try and put some of the fallen trees in the aftermath of Helene to use. Kelly said he’s not confident that will satisfy demand for western NC’s timber.

“Loggers would much rather have trees that are standing than trees that are blown over,” he said.

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