Forest Service Urged to Amend Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan in Wake of Hurricane Helene

A coalition of conservation groups sent a letter to the U.S. Forest Service this week, asking the agency to amend the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan due to the tremendous damage Hurricane Helene did to North Carolina’s Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests.  

Hurricane Helene devastated much of western North Carolina. In some areas, 30 inches of rain fell over three days, washing out roads and bridges, and causing landslides and floods. Wind speeds in some places topped 90 miles per hour.  

The impacts of Helene are obvious in the Nantahala and Pisgah Forests, where the extremely strong winds toppled thousands of acres of forest. The Forest Service estimated the hurricane caused around 117,000 acres of vegetation loss across the two forests.  

The Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan, which guides the long-term future of the forests and was published in March 2023, dramatically underestimated the amount of natural disturbance that would happen in these forests. Despite warnings from conservation groups, the Forest Service assumed just 280 acres of forest would be impacted by wildfires, storms, and landslides each year. That means, relative to the agency’s estimations, Helene caused 418 years’ worth of natural disturbance in a single day.  

Federal law requires that forest plans be amended when conditions on the forest have “significantly changed,” and in their letter, conservation groups explain that amending the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan would allow the Forest Service to ensure rebuilding efforts are done in a way that strengthens our forests and the communities that rely on them. The groups also urged the agency to lower its logging objectives. The current Plan includes a five-fold increase in logging to replace supposedly “missing” natural disturbances, which Helene showed is unnecessary.  

Below are statements from the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, MountainTrue, and Sierra Club:

“The current Forest Plan doesn’t reflect the enormous change brought by Hurricane Helene, and it doesn’t reflect a sustainable future either,” said Ben Prater, Southeast Program Director for Defenders of Wildlife. “A truly strong plan must feature adaptive management strategies, so that we are able to respond to current forest conditions as well as supporting the surrounding communities and ecosystems no matter what changes come.” 

“Hurricane Helene did catastrophic damage to our communities as well as the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests. Despite our warnings, the Forest Plan didn’t leave room for that kind of damage,” Sam Evans, leader of SELC’s National Forests and Parks Program, said. “Following the Plan as currently written would just heap more damage on top of what’s already happened, hurting our forests and the people, plants, and animals that rely on them.”

"The new Forest Plan was built on the assumption that nature doesn't produce enough young trees, so the Forest Service decided to dedicate 100,000 acres of irreplaceable natural areas to timber production. Helene proved that the assumptions behind the Forest Plan were wrong, and produced as much young forest in one day as the Forest Service predicted all natural events would produce in over a century,” Josh Kelly, Resilient Forests Director at MountainTrue, said.  

“The current Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan downplays the harm from hurricanes and underestimates the landslide risks of roads. Helene just exposed the Plan’s fundamental flaws,” said Will Harlan, Southeast Director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This Plan was already failing us before Helene, and it urgently needs to be amended to protect our forests and communities.”

"The severe impact of Helene on our two national forests presents yet another opportunity for the Forest Service to correct its flawed planning assumptions and inflated timber objectives,” said David Reid, National Forests Issue Chair for the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club. “The question is, will the agency itself recognize this obvious need, or will it plow ahead despite the largest red flag in our lifetime?”