The forests of the Pacific Northwest are globally significant for their ability to secure, or sequester, carbon and keep it safely stored in their old trees and rich soil. While there is growing consensus that forest management plays a key role in a climate plan, there seems to be much disagreement about what that "management" should look like on the ground.

Recent studies out of Oregon State University indicate that Cascadia’s temperate rainforests are unmatched in their ability to sequester carbon, pulling it out of the atmosphere at a faster rate than any other forest ecosystem in the world. The catch is that these forests can only be a real climate solution if they are protected from industrial logging. While the timber industry may assure us of the values of clearcut, plantation-style management, science-backed studies have shown otherwise. We know that old forests store far more carbon than young plantations. Most tree farms operating on short 40-60 year cut-and-replant cycles never reach their carbon storing potential.

In natural forest conditions, when a tree dies, some carbon is released into the atmosphere, but the majority is stored in the soil and forest floor. Industrial logging interrupts this natural process by taking that carbon out of the forest and emitting most back into the atmosphere. The carbon that is stored in short-lived wood products like paper and packaging biodegrade and release back into the atmosphere within 10 years, and longer-lived products typically only last 50 years or less.

Put simply, logging is not a carbon solution.

All told, the logging industry is the largest fossil fuel emitter in our state. In 2016, the Oregon Global Warming Commission reported that the wood products sector itself contributed 50% more pollution than the transportation and energy sector combined.

The mismanagement of our forests over the past century has released massive amounts of forest-carbon into the atmosphere, and the destruction is continuing at a steady pace. Sadly, this is not just limited to private timberlands. Hardly a month goes by without the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management introducing a new clearcut-style management proposal in old, intact forest.

A local example in the Willamette National Forest is the proposed "regeneration harvest" (read: clearcut with minimal tree retention) of nearly 1,000 acres of mature and old-growth forests as part of the "Flat Country" timber sale, above the beloved McKenzie River and adjacent to the Mt. Washington Wilderness. If this project moves forward, not only will it release significant carbon emissions into the atmosphere, but also the healthy old forest that now exists there would be destroyed. All for the timber dollar.

The process of turning existing old forests into young plantations is undercutting our real climate solution: protecting healthy forests. Decades of irresponsible industrial forest practices have created a "carbon debt" that we can only begin to repay if we protect old forests on federal lands and improve forest management on private and state lands.

Perhaps the most beautiful part about existing, healthy forests is that they do their job all on their own. They have a natural process at work right now pulling carbon from the atmosphere and storing it safely for as long as we don’t destroy them.

Samantha Krop is a grassroots organizer for Cascadia Wildlands. This is her first monthly column for The Register-Guard.