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The Biden administration plans to replant trees on millions of acres of forest affected by wildfires and other symptoms of climate change, like insects and drought. Warming temperatures and less rain mean hotter and bigger fires are taking out trees more rapidly than in the past, leading to a backlog of 4 million acres of forest in need of replanting. This comes on the heels of legislation passed last year requiring the Forest Service to plant 1.2 billion trees in national forests, called the REPLANT Act.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which houses the Forest Service, said it will have to quadruple the number of seedlings produced by its nurseries to get through the backlog and keep up with future tree loss. The agency said it plans to scale up to about 400,000 acres annually. It planted about 60,000 acres last year. Most of the replanting will occur in the West. The price tag on these efforts could reach $260 million, according to the Forest Service, which is set to spent over $100 million on reforestation work this year.
But this replanting effort could be stymied by the very conditions that precipitated it, as many seedlings won't be able to survive to adulthood due to climate change. That's according to Joe Fargione, science director for North America at the Nature Conservancy.
“You’ve got to be smart about where you plant,” he said. “There are some places that the climate has already changed enough that it makes the probability of successfully reestablishing trees pretty low.”
This comes on the heels of the Forest Service announcing plans to cut down small trees on thousands of acres in order to better protect California's giant sequoias from wildfire, further highlighting the challenges of fighting climate change as it ravages Western public lands.
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This is almost the sole source of water in the central part of New Mexico and we’re not trying to save it just for the fish... We’re trying to save it for everybody and if the fish is that piece that helps us do that, then that’s what we have to use.”
