This past winter the Forest Service released its long anticipated final planning rule for the nation's 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The plan validates what many scientists have been saying for years: mature and old-growth forests play a critical role in reducing climate change and providing clean drinking water to millions of Americans. On this episode of Locus Focus, we talk with Dominick A. DellaSala, Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, about why we need to remain vigilant about protecting our precious forest resources, especially in this current political climate in which amped up logging is being promoted as job creation.
Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala, President and Chief Scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon is an internationally renowned author of over 150 technical papers, including the award winning “Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World” (www.islandpress.org/dellasala). He has appeared in National Geographic, Science Digest, Science Magazine, Time Magazine, Audubon Magazine, National Wildlife Magazine, High Country News, Terrain Magazine, NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, Jim Lehrer News Hour, CNN, MSNBC, “Living on Earth (NPR),” and several PBS wildlife documentaries. He has testified in congressional hearings in defense of the Endangered Species Act, roadless area conservation, national monument designations, forest protections, and climate change among others. His rainforest book received an academic excellence award in 2012 from Choice magazine, one of the nation's premier book review journals. Dominick co-founded the Geos Institute in July 2006. He is motivated by leaving a living planet for his daughter and all those to follow.
- KBOO