28 January 23
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ALSO SEE: Video Shows Brutal Memphis Police Beating of Tyre Nichols
Nichols cried out for his mother as police doused him with pepper spray and brutally punched and kicked him.
The four videos [Warning: graphic images] the city released show the violent attack on Nichols following a traffic stop on Jan. 7. The officers who beat him have been charged with murder. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department, and the FBI are investigating.
Nichols died on Jan. 10 from his injuries.
In the first video, at around the minute mark, an officer is shown pulling out a gun. Another officer yells, “You’re going to get your head blown off,” and someone else shouts, “Get your ass out of the fucking car.” Nichols can be heard saying, “I didn’t do anything” as he is pulled to the ground.
Officers continue yelling at Nichols to “get on the ground,” and Nichols can be heard replying, “Ok, I am on the ground.” Nichols also asks police officers to “stop” and says, “You guys are trying to do a lot right now. I’m just trying to go home.”
As officers continue to yell and push Nichols onto the ground, Nichols breaks free and starts to run. Officers pursue Nichols on foot, where he is tackled by another Memphis Police officer a short distance away. At one point an officer says, “I hope they stomp his ass.”
In the second video released by police, a pole mounted security camera captured footage of officers struggling with Nichols on a residential street. One officer uses his baton to beat Nichols as he struggles on the sidewalk. When Nichols manages to regain his footing, several of the officers can be seen restraining him while another officer repeatedly punches Nichols. At one point, an officer kicks Nichols in the head twice.
In the third video, officers can be seen pinning Nichols to the ground, punching him in the face, and spraying him with pepper spray. Nichols can be heard crying out for his mother as police kick him and hit him with batons. Nichols is seen laying motionless and unattended on the ground in video four, while officers discuss the traffic stop.
Ahead of the video’s release, the police chief prepared the public for what they were going to see and acknowledged the need to protest while asking residents to demonstrate peacefully. In a video statement Wednesday night, Davis said she anticipated people would feel “outrage” at the “disregard of basic human rights” shown in the footage. She predicted people would take a stand against what they’d seen and urged them to demonstrate peacefully. “I expect our citizens to exercise their First Amendment right to protest to demand action and results, but we need to ensure our community is safe in this process,” she said. “None of this is a calling card for inciting violence or destruction on our community or against our citizens.”
On the morning of Jan. 8, while Nichols, a FedEx worker and avid skateboarder, was fighting for his life in the hospital, the Memphis Police Department released a statement with a sparse description of their official version of the events of the previous evening: Officers had pulled Nichols over around 8:30 pm for “reckless driving,” it said. As officers approached Nichols’ vehicle, Memphis PD claimed, a “confrontation occurred” and Nichols tried to flee on foot. Officers chased him and took him into custody after another supposed “confrontation.” He then complained of “shortness of breath,” the statement said, and he was taken “in critical condition” by an ambulance to the hospital.
In an interview Friday morning on CNN, Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, said that police had knocked on her door the evening of Jan. 7 and told her her son had been arrested for driving under the influence. It shocked her. “My son don’t drink like that,” she said. They told her they “had to pepper spray and tase him” to take him into custody and that he was being treated by a paramedic after which he would be taken to the hospital, then booked. Wells said they asked her if he’d been taking any drugs because, they claimed, he’d displayed “superhuman strength” while officers tried to handcuff him. “What they were describing was not my son, so I was very confused,” she said. When she asked if she could see him, they told her no, and would only tell her he was “nearby.” “I got nothing from them,” she said. It wasn’t until St. Francis Hospital called her at 4 a.m. and asked “Why aren’t you here?” that she said she knew where to find her son. The doctor told her on the phone that he’d suffered cardiac arrest and kidney failure. “This doesn’t sound consistent to somebody being tased or pepper sprayed,” she said. The Memphis Police department did not respond Friday afternoon to a request for comment on Wells’ description of the officers’ behavior that night.
Sitting beside Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, RowVaughn described arriving at the hospital and seeing her son. “They had beat him to a pulp,” she said. “He had bruises all over him, his head was swollen like a watermelon, his neck was busting because of the swelling. They broke his neck. My son’s nose looked like a ‘S.’ They actually just beat the crap out of him. When I saw that, I knew my son was gone.” Two days later, on Jan. 10, he succumbed to his injuries.
While Nichols’ family hopes for justice in his killings, loved ones are also remembering him for the life he lived, which included passions and hobbies beyond the headlines about his killing. One of his favorite pastimes was skateboarding, which he reportedly did from the time he was 6 years old. In a 2010 YouTube skate video of Nichols that’s spreading on social media, he looks at home on the board, landing 360 flips and smoothly linking multiple tricks together. One friend told the Memphis newspaper the Commercial Appeal, “skating gave him wings.”
Nichols was also a self-described aspiring photographer. On a website he set up to showcase his landscape photos, he said, “photography helps me look at the world in a more creative way.” The portfolio he posted includes pictures of Memphis-area landmarks, both historic and mundane: an Elvis statue, Beale Street, the FedExForum arena downtown. His mother told CNN he loved photographing sunsets. “I hope to one day let people see what I see and to hopefully admire my work based on the quality and ideals of my work,” he wrote on the site. “So on that note enjoy my page and let me know what you think.” He signed off, “Your friend, Tyre D. Nichols.”
On Monday, Nichols’ family privately watched the police body camera footage of the fatal traffic stop on the night of Jan. Through their lawyers, Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the family said officers had treated Nichols like “a human piñata.” Romanucci told reporters, “It was an unadulterated, unabashed, non-stop beating of this young boy for three minutes.”
The family attended a candlelight vigil held Thursday night at a local skatepark, where activists spoke out against police violence in Memphis. “People are literally violently murdered in the city of Memphis,” said one activist, according to reporting by news channel WREG. “And the city answers back by adding more police officers. By adding more task force units. Not this time, we’re not going to take it no more.” Nichols’ mother reportedly asked protesters to keep the demonstrations nonviolent. “I want each and every one of you to protest in peace,” she said. “I don’t want us burning up our cities, tearing up our streets, because that’s now what my son stood for.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters Friday he had also seen the video and was “appalled” by it. He promised a thorough investigation into the incident, while also urging the public to remain peaceful. “I would just add my voice to the Attorney General’s and to the families, to whom my heart goes out, that there’s a right way and a wrong way in this country to express being upset or angry about something, and we need to make sure that if there is that sentiment expressed here, it’s done in the right way.”
Speaking at a Thursday press conference, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation David Rausch said the beating “shouldn’t have happened.” He said that he was sickened by the body camera footage, which he, too, described as “appalling.”
On Friday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre extended condolences to Nichols’ family and the city of Memphis on behalf of President Biden. “We all must recommit ourselves to the critical work that must be done to advance meaningful reforms,” she said, adding that Biden believes that “in order to deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their rights.”
Last week, after an internal investigation by the Memphis PD had found the officers had been “directly responsible” for Nichols’ injuries, they fired them. Thursday afternoon, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith were charged with second-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, and official misconduct and oppression. At a news conference announcing the charges, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said the investigation is still ongoing. All of the officers are out on bail, according to Shelby County jail’s online inmate search.
At a press conference on Thursday, according to reporting by the New York Times, attorney William Massey, who is representing Martin, said, “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die.” At the same event, Blake Ballin, who represents Mills, expressed concern that the release of the video could bias a jury pool against his client. “I would just caution the public to reserve judgement,” he said, . “Know that there’s always more to the story.” Both said Thursday they had not seen the video and that their clients would plead not guilty.
The family’s lawyers said Thursday in a statement the indictments gave them hope for justice. “This tragedy meets the absolute definition of a needless and unnecessary death,” they said. “Tyre’s loved ones’ lives were forever changed when he was beaten to death, and we will keep saying his name until justice is served.”
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An Atlanta police vehicle is set on fire during a "Stop Cop City" protest. (photo: Getty Images)
Georgia Gov. Declares State of Emergency, Calls Up National Guard Amid "Cop City" Protests
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "In Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp on Thursday declared a state of emergency in response to mass protests that erupted after the police killing of environmental defender Manuel Terán in Atlanta last week."
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At least 7 died after a gunman opened fire outside a Jerusalem synagogue. The suspect, who was Palestinian, was shot and killed by police, according to authorities. (photo: ABC News)
Benjamin Netanyahu promises immediate action after gunman opened fire on people in worst terrorist attack on Israelis in years
A gunman in a car waited on Friday night until Shabbat prayers ended at a synagogue in Neve Yaakov, a neighbourhood of Israeli settlers in occupied East Jerusalem, before opening fire on people as they left the building, a preliminary Israeli police probe said. The attack came on International Holocaust Remembrance day.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said medics declared five people dead at the scene and said that two more died while being treated in hospital. The death toll was revised down from eight to seven, and at least nine more victims are understood to be in critical condition.
Addressing reporters at Israel’s national police headquarters, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had held a security assessment and that Israel would take immediate action with “determination and composure”, without giving further details. He called on the public not to take the law into their own hands.
Television footage showed bodies strewn around the street, while police and ambulance sirens blared across Jerusalem late into the night.
Israel’s Channel 12 news reported that the gunman first attacked an elderly woman and a man on a motorbike before approaching the synagogue, although police did not immediately confirm those details.
The attacker was shot and killed by officers while trying to flee, police said. Police said he was a resident of East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967.
Arabic and Hebrew media reports identified him as a 21-year-old who did not have a security record.
Friday night’s shooting was the worst terrorist attack on Israelis in years, and came a day after the deadliest Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank in two decades, in which nine Palestinians were killed.
The raid on Thursday morning targeted Islamic Jihad militants in the Jenin refugee camp, in the north of the Palestinian territory, triggering tit-for-tat rocket fire between the Gaza Strip and Israel in the early hours of Friday and sparking fears of a wider escalation in the decades-long conflict.
Friday prayers at Jerusalem’s holy al-Aqsa mosque in the Temple Mount complex – often a catalyst for violence – passed without incident before the evening shooting.
Israel’s police commissioner, Kobi Shabtai, told reporters that it was believed the attacker acted alone, but officers were searching the area to rule out the possibility of accomplices.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting, although a spokesperson for Hamas, the armed Palestinian movement in control of the Gaza Strip, said that the attack was connected to the Jenin raid.
The synagogue attack was a “natural response to the occupation’s criminal actions,” Hazem Qassem said. The smaller Gaza-based militant group, Islamic Jihad, also praised the attack without claiming responsibility.
Last year was the bloodiest in Israel and the West Bank since 2004, with about 250 Palestinians and 30 Israelis killed. Another 49 Palestinians died in the Gaza Strip in a three-day surprise Israeli bombing campaign in August.
So far this month, 32 Palestinians have been killed.
Late on Friday unconfirmed reports emerged that an Israeli settler in the West Bank had shot and injured four Palestinians in the town of Beita, near Nablus. One person was reported to be in critical condition.
President Joe Biden spoke to Netanyahu to offer US support to the government and people of Israel, calling the shootings “an attack against the civilised world”, officials said. “The president stressed the iron-clad US commitment to Israel’s security,” the White House said of the call.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is due to travel to the region this weekend, said: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms the horrific terrorist attack. We are in close contact with our Israeli partners and reaffirm our unwavering commitment to Israel’s security.”
The US state department, along with the UN and other international mediators, called on both sides to de-escalate the situation.
A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “It is particularly abhorrent that the attack occurred at a place of worship, and on the very day we commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day.”
The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, described the attack as “horrific,” adding: “We stand with our Israeli friends.”
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Rep. George Santos leaves a GOP caucus meeting on Capitol Hill, January 25, 2023. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The request indicates an "active criminal investigation" by the Justice Department, a campaign finance lawyer told The Washington Post.
The Justice Department also asked the FEC to provide any relevant documents for an investigation, sources told the Post.
Santos has issued a plethora of lies about his heritage, family, education and work experience. He has ignored calls for his resignation and has claimed he merely “embellished” his résumé.
Changes this week on his campaign finance forms also indicated that a $700,000 donation that had been identified as his own personal loan did not come from Santos. That leaves a significant mystery about the source of the funds.
Santos’ campaign committee told federal regulators on Wednesday that it had hired a new treasurer, but the man it named said he had not accepted the job.
Santos has said he was making $55,000 a year before he launched the Devolder Organization in 2021. Funding for the mysterious company — which had no website and was dissolved not long after it was started — is murky. But Santos claimed it rocketed his salary to $750,000 (with up to $10 million in dividends).
In a separate investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday conducted interviews on Santos’ role in the investment firm Harbor City Capital, which shut down in 2021 after the SEC accused it of operating a “classic Ponzi scheme,” the Post reported.
FEC investigators will likely honor the Justice Department’s request and step back from their civil investigation to let the DOJ conduct a criminal probe, the Post reported.
The DOJ back-off request “indicates there’s an active criminal investigation,” campaign finance lawyer Brett Kappel told the Post.
David Mason, a former FEC commissioner, told the newspaper: “They don’t want two sets of investigators tripping over each other. And they don’t want anything that the FEC, which is a civil agency, does to potentially complicate their criminal case.”
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A U.S. Border Patrol agent checks the passports of immigrants after they crossed the border with Mexico on May 18, 2022, in Yuma, Arizona. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Menendez, Booker, Ocasio-Cortez and 74 others signed the letter critical of policies that restrict asylum access for migrants crossing the southern U.S. border.
The letter, signed by New Jersey Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 74 others, said the new policies announced Jan. 5 to open more legal options for migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba while also eliminating pathways for those nationalities to claim asylum at the border are “disappointing.”
While 30,000 migrants from those four countries will be eligible to apply for humanitarian parole protections from their home countries, Mexico has also agreed to take back 30,000 migrants per month from those same countries as the Biden administration expands the Trump-era Covid protections known as Title 42.
At a press conference Thursday, Menendez said, “We recognize that the United States is experiencing a difficult migration challenge at the southern border. But as elected officials, we are duty-bound to propose legal solutions, one that protects asylum-seekers while also securing the safe removal of migrants who have no legal claim to stay in the United States.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has also said the administration is preparing to propose a new federal rulemaking that would allow his department to deny the right to claim asylum at the southern border for migrants who do not first seek asylum in a country they pass through.
Stephen Miller, the senior adviser behind then-President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, introduced a similar proposal, commonly known as a “transit ban,” that was blocked by courts in 2020.
“Instead of issuing a new asylum transit ban and expanding Title 42,” the Democratic lawmakers said in the letter to Biden, “we encourage your administration to stand by your commitment to restore and protect the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.” The letter noted that asylum is an international right that should not be restricted.
In response, a White House official said, “Donald Trump tried to categorically bar asylum in the United States for everyone, everywhere. The Biden administration is creating safe and orderly pathways for people who want to seek asylum in the United States. People can make an appointment from their phone to apply for asylum at a port of entry; plus, they can use the expanded parole process, or use the expanded refugee programs. That’s not an asylum ban. It’s a safe, orderly, and humane process for seeking asylum.”
As many as 20 Republican-governed states, with the help of a group led by Miller, are now attempting to block the administration from opening those legal pathways in a new lawsuit recently filed in federal court in Texas.
Biden has faced intense criticism over his border policies from both parties, with Republicans saying they are unwilling to negotiate on immigration legislation or more funding for border initiatives until the administration does more to secure the border. He also faces lawsuits from immigration advocates for cutting off pathways for asylum-seekers.
Customs and Border Protection encountered undocumented migrants more than 250,000 times in December, a record monthly high to end a record high year of border encounters.
Senior Homeland Security officials told reporters on a call Wednesday that since the new policies for Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans went into effect early this month, the number of people from those countries crossing the border had been drastically cut.
On Jan. 24, the officials said, Customs and Border Protection was encountering 115 migrants from those countries per day as a seven-day average, compared to the average of 3,367 per day Dec. 11, before the policy went into effect.
But the officials would not say how many migrants from those countries had applied or been approved to come to the U.S. legally under the newly established programs.
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A Ukrainian soldier guards his position. (photo: Mstyslav Chernov/AP)
For the past four months, residents have slowly trickled back into the reclaimed city. But signs of the conflict — and the chance that it might return — are everywhere.
All around, the blackened and pockmarked high-rise apartment buildings testify to the ferocity of the fighting that occurred here in Ukraine’s northeast in the early months of the war. But there is a stillness now, and residents are not quite sure how to interpret it.
Ukrainian forces expelled the Russian military from almost the whole region in a blitz offensive in September that took much of the world by surprise. Not only did it inject new vigor into the Ukrainian war effort, but it also gave Kharkiv some breathing space.
But the Ukrainians could push their enemies only so far. The border is about 25 miles from the city center, well within range of many Russian weapons.
Kateryna Vnukova, 19, an economics student in Kharkiv, said that from her 12th-floor apartment in the city center, she can sometimes see shelling off in the distance.
“I think now it’s all calm and quiet in Kharkiv, but it’s not calm and quiet,” said Ms. Vnukova, who was out for a twilight walk last weekend, but was trying to get home before sundown. “Normally when it gets dark, the devils come out, the ones there, over the border.”
Now there are signs that Russian forces are regrouping for a possible new offensive that could once again threaten the city. On Monday, Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, told a Ukrainian news outlet that а Russian tank division that had been deployed in Belarus had been diverted, possibly as part of a buildup of forces that could once again push into the Kharkiv region.
As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches its first anniversary, Kharkiv has become a showcase of Ukrainian military success, but also of its limitations. For the past four months, residents have slowly trickled back into the city; power, heat and gas have been restored to most dwellings; there is traffic in the streets and there are patrons in the restaurants and cafes, though many of their windows remain broken and boarded up.
Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, boasted that the city population had doubled since the first months of the war to about 1.1 million people (from a prewar population of 1.4 million) and that construction was underway to repair some of the 4,500 homes severely damaged in Russia’s failed effort to take the city. Though mindful that the fighting is far from over, the mayor is working with the acclaimed architect Norman Foster on a postwar development plan.
“We have to return Kharkiv residents to the city, but they can’t come back and find themselves in a broken shell,” he said. “The general plan for the development of London in 1943 was done under bombardment by the Fascists.”
But his development plan does not envision a speedy end to the conflict, or a total respite for Kharkiv. Among its provisions is a requirement that all newly built apartment blocks include underground parking lots that can double as bomb shelters.
While it is quieter in Kharkiv than it has ever been since the invasion began, to residents, the war does not seem all that far away. The air-raid sirens sound constantly, and Ukrainian fighter jets roar through the air on patrol. On a recent night, several burly men in camouflage uniforms and balaclavas entered an upscale Japanese restaurant to hand out draft notices to Ukrainian men, sending the waiters into hiding.
Last weekend, a contingent of Ukrainian troops from the Kharkiv region was taking advantage of the relative quiet to hone their rifle skills and their combat maneuvers in a wooded training ground just outside of town.
“We have some time, and we’re not going to waste it,” said their instructor, a 22-year-old lieutenant with the call sign Clover.
Russian artillery and rockets pound outlying villages in the region, and heavier missiles regularly hit the city center as Russian forces continue to target critical infrastructure like power plants.
An enormous thermal power plant has been attacked several times, including with an Iranian-made Shahed explosive drone. The attacks have blown a gigantic hole through the roof, broken all of the windows, and knocked out heating to the city for several days. Inside, workers keep equipment from freezing with large, gas-fed fire pits and plastic tarps to divide the huge boiler room into more easily warmed sections. The plant’s main boiler remains mangled and out of commission, but workers have managed to keep the plant churning out heat with auxiliary boilers.
No workers have been killed in the strikes.
“Thankfully, God is protecting us,” said Yevhen Kaurkin, the plant’s technical director.
The war is closer still in the northern neighborhood of Saltivka, which was ravaged by the fighting and remains a difficult place to live despite efforts to improve conditions. On a recent day, city workers in fluorescent green vests were raking leaves in front of a bombed-out building that looked like a wobbly tower of Jenga blocks.
Because so many people have been killed while waiting at bus stops, the city has installed fortified concrete shelters designed to protect people from shelling. Each has a monitor inside showing a live feed of the street so that people can know when the bus arrives.
During the worst of the fighting, hundreds of people sheltered in the musky basement of Kharkiv Municipal Gymnasium No. 172. Though no one now shelters there full time, hundreds still come back daily for warm meals prepared in the school’s kitchen.
The school’s director, Oleksandra Utkina, who also teaches mathematics, said she was excited for the day when children could return, but acknowledged that would not happen anytime soon.
“We need for them to stop shooting first,” she said.
Nearby, at a large army tent set up amid burned-out apartment blocks, a few locals were warming themselves and watching a soccer game on a large flat-screen television. Svitlana Kaminska, 62, was heating her dinner in a microwave. Though most residents of Saltivka left the neighborhood during the most intense fighting, Ms. Kaminska stayed, sheltering in her windowless corridor as rockets hit her apartment building again and again. In the entire building, she is the only one who remained.
Just to get to her front door, she has to scramble over mounds of debris and avoid falling into a large hole in the sidewalk where a shell landed in August. Some of the apartments in her building have been gutted by fire, and none have windows. Successive blast waves have knocked in some of the interior walls and punched out the steel frames of the elevator doors.
Ms. Kaminska’s existence is grim. She has rigged up a small space heater and a lamp to a thin white extension cord plugged into the only working plug in the building, at the bottom of the stairs, and has managed to heat her home to a few degrees above freezing. Only the audio on her television is working.
But these discomforts do not bother her much, she said.
“For me, the most frightening thing is not the cold or the fact that I’m alone here, but heaven forbid the possibility of another attack,” she said. “Doesn’t anyone have influence over this Russia, to quiet them down a little?”
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Threatened mature forest in the Yaak Valley of Montana. (photo: Dominick DellaSala)
Large trees in older forests that hold significant amounts of carbon located within U.S. national forests are vulnerable to logging, according to a new study published Jan. 6 in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.
Forest protection efforts often single out old-growth forests because of the carbon they keep out of the atmosphere, along with the complex ecosystems they anchor — and rightly so, Dominick DellaSala, a study co-author, told Mongabay.
“You’re walking through these magnificent forests with these giant trees that are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old,” said DellaSala, chief scientist at the Earth Island Institute’s Wild Heritage Project. Protecting them is “a no-brainer.”
But long-lived forests, even if they’ve been logged too recently to meet the strict definition of old growth, provide many of the same benefits.
“It’s not just primary or old growth, but it’s that stage just before old growth that matters,” DellaSala said. “We need to get back to our old-growth forests that were degraded and lost over centuries of logging.”
For the study, DellaSala and his colleagues used publicly available data from the U.S. Forest Service to calculate the carbon contents of mature and old-growth forests in a sample of 11 national forests across the different geographic regions of the contiguous United States. They found that the trees in those forests hold nearly 561 million metric tons of carbon, roughly equivalent to the CO2 emissions of 551 coal-fired power plants, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But their analysis also revealed that one- to two-thirds of that carbon stock on U.S. Forest Service land is at risk because it is held by large trees in mature forests that aren’t protected and potentially at risk of being logged.
“We hear all the time, at least from federal agencies, that they’re not logging large trees,” DellaSala said, “but no one’s been able to define what ‘large’ is.”
First off, it can depend on where those large trees are located: An older tree that’s relatively large compared to others in the forest in one part of the country might be considerably smaller than trees of the same age in another part of the country. But no matter where they’re located, as these trees age, they often become increasingly vital members of a functioning forest ecosystem: They’re fire-resistant, hold oodles of carbon both in their trunks and beneath the soil, support biodiversity, and help maintain a functioning water cycle.
Similarly, as the entire stand matures, it becomes more complex and a more robust repository of carbon and species.
“The problem becomes … how do you know it’s mature?” DellaSala said.
And that’s a problem the team sought to solve: In addition to quantifying the carbon held in these trees, the researchers also worked on a new way to define what a large tree is based not just on its diameter but on its age in relation to the maturity of the stand and the point at which it’s pulling the most carbon from the atmosphere.
Again, the age range of these trees varies depending on the type of forest, but it’s generally between 35 and 75 years, the authors found. To make things simple, they suggest protecting all trees that are 80 years or older.
“Our approach shows that logging protections grounded in a straightforward, age-based cutoff — such as 80 years, as many are calling for — would protect significant amounts of carbon, accommodate forest growth differences, and be readily usable in the field,” Carolyn Ramírez, a staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Forests Project and a co-author of the paper, said in a statement.
Tara Hudiburg, an associate professor of forest, rangeland and fire sciences at the University of Idaho, who was not involved in the study, said integrating more than just a tree’s diameter in the decision of whether to cut it down was “a good idea.”
And she noted the importance of these stands to the climate.
“Do we need mature and old-growth forest to stay intact in the biosphere so that we keep that CO2 out of the atmosphere?” she asked. Her answer was unequivocal: “Yes.”
The study by DellaSala and his colleagues is the third in a four-part series that aims to provide a comprehensive inventory of old-growth and mature forests in the United States. In part, the research is a response to President Joe Biden’s Earth Day Executive Order for such an assessment. But DellaSala also said the work has been on his “professional bucket list for a couple of decades.”
“Why don’t we have a basic inventory and mapping of mature and old-growth forest in the United States?” he asked. “We don’t even have a basic map. I couldn’t even tell you how much old growth, for example, that we have nationwide.”
The research series began with an assessment of the carbon stocks in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, revealing that 89% of the Tongass’s productive forests are old-growth. The Tongass, about the size of the U.S. state of West Virginia or almost the size of Ireland, is the largest in the National Forest system. On Jan. 25, the Biden administration announced it was reinstating restrictions on roadbuilding in much of the Tongass in an effort to protect wildlife, watersheds and the climate benefits the forest provides.
The second part of the series, published in September, mapped out the country’s mature forests, revealing that less than a quarter are fully protected. The fourth study in the series will overlay the map-based results of the second study with the findings from this latest analysis, DellaSala said. Combined, they make a critical finding clear, he added: “As the forest gets older, most of the carbon capture and storage is in the larger trees.”
The findings also demonstrate the role these long-standing forests can play in meeting the Biden administration’s climate mitigation goals — namely, to cut carbon emissions by at least 50% of 2005 levels by 2030, DellaSala said.
“A lot of us are saying now that we’ve got less than a decade to really turn this thing around,” he said. “Here, we have a solution to the problem.”
DellaSala noted that ending fossil fuel usage is key, but that protecting mature forests will also make a difference.
“These older forests are our best nature-based climate solution,” he said. “They buy us time, they give us hope, they give us a chance to turn the corner.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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