NEWS

On March 28, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will reverse policy and no longer consider the economic impact when making Endangered Species Act designations, despite feedback from organizations like the Hardwood Federation, who urged regulators to allow flexibility. Previously, regulators rejected the one-size-fits-all policy that had significantly expanded the number of endangered listings. 
 

The recently enacted fiscal year 2024 spending package includes important priorities for the hardwood industry. The new law classifies biomass as carbon neutral across federal agencies, directs the Forest Products Laboratory to conduct a study quantifying the amount of carbon stored in wood products, and states that "efforts will also continue to focus on the environmental lifecycle benefits of wood products in the built environment."
 

A new bill would prevent the Biden administration from proceeding with the current old-growth forest plan. The plan, which imposes a one-size-fits-all approach to classifying old-growth forests, would remove more national forest acreage from sustainable forest management and create complex new management requirements.

On March 29, EPA set strict emission standards for heavy-duty trucks and buses in an attempt to fight climate change. The complex new rule requires 30% of "heavy-heavy-duty vocational" trucks to be zero-emission—electric—by 2032.
 

In our last newsletter, we reported on the recently released EPA draft risk evaluation which concluded that formaldehyde presents an unreasonable risk to human health. EPA has allowed only 60 days to review and respond with comments on the over 1,000-page document. DHA and other organizations have requested an extension to file comments to allow us to carefully study the evaluation and respond.