George Wuerthner
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Stephen Corry is the founder and director of Survival International, an organization that seeks to protect tribal people’s rights. While a worthy goal, Corry, unfortunately, seeks to blame conservation for many of the ills facing tribal people, rather than recognizing that conservation is ultimately the best way to retain and protect native culture from the…
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Oregon Congressman’s Greg Walden’s (other western legislators also are sponsors) support of the so-called Resilient Federal Forests Act is based on faulty assumptions. The Resilient Federal Forests Act will actually decrease forest resilience. Here’s a link to Walden’s position on the Act. Here’s just a few of the problems. Walden asserts that if beetles, and…
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The article below has many important points from the Antiplanner that I believe are quite accurate. The FS spends almost a thousand dollars per acre trying to control fires. This is due to the absolutely insane response of the agency to fire. First, most fires self extinguish without any control, yet we waste money jumping…
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Another new study titled “Does wildfire likelihood increase following insect outbreaks in conifer forests?” by Garrent Meigs and co authors concludes that bark beetles outbreaks do not lead to greater likelihood of fires. This research joins a growing list of studies, all using different methods of evaluation, that finds that bark beetles are not a driving…
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One of the justifications for logging by the Forest Service around the West is the idea that fire suppression has led to fewer fires, and thus greater fuel build up than historically occurred. Therefore, mechanically reducing fuels—i.e. logging—is reasonable because otherwise we will see large wildfires. However, both assumptions—namely there is fuel build up…
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Recently GOP Presidential Candidate Scott Walker suggested he might be ready to begin war on his first day of office, presumably against Iran. Walker’s bellicose chest-beating is in response to the recent agreement the Obama administration brokered with Iran to limit its nuclear capabilities. But Walker’s rhetoric also demonstrates a failure to understand what really…
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The following is commentary from Phil Cafaro, professor at Colorado State University that are germane to all of us who value wildlands, wildlife and a functioning environment. Below are portions of the Pope Francis speech and Phil’s commentary in italics. Dear Colleagues, There is a lot to chew on in the Pope’s encyclical letter, released…