BILLINGS, Mont. – The Biden administration on Tuesday abruptly dropped its nascent plan to protect old growth forests after getting pushback from Republicans and the timber industry.

The move was announced by U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore in a letter to forest supervisors.

It brings a sudden end to a yearslong process to craft a nationwide plan that would better protect old trees that are increasingly threatened by climate change. The effort had been supported by some conservationists as one of the most significant forest preservation efforts in decades.

President Joe Biden launched the initiative with an executive order on Earth Day in 2022. The proposal had been through extensive public comment periods and internal analyses by government officials. It was due to be finalized any day.

The plan would have limited logging in old-growth forests, with exceptions to allow logging in some old-growth areas to protect against wildfires.

But those exceptions were not enough for the timber industry and Republicans in Congress who bitterly opposed the administration’s proposal. They said it wasn’t needed since many forested areas already are protected. And they warned it could be devastating to logging companies that rely on access to cheap timber on public lands.

GOP lawmakers introduced legislation while the administration’s plans were still in the works to block them from going into effect.

Moore said in his letter that much was learned from the first-of-its-kind effort to identify old growth trees on public lands across the nation. But he also acknowledged criticism from those who said the administration’s approach to old growth forests was flawed since they can vary greatly between different types of ecosystems.

“There is strong support for, and an expectation of us, to continue to conserve these forests based on the best available scientific information,” Moore wrote. “There was also feedback that there are important place-based differences that we will need to understand in order to conserve old growth forests.”