Forest Service
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One of the biggest impacts resulting from logging our forests that is largely ignored by public land management agencies is the contribution that timber harvest makes to Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. Increasingly it is clear that the greatest value of our public forests might be to end all thinning/logging and protect them as carbon…
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We often hear that our forests are “unhealthy” and among the indicators of forest ill-health are large acreages burning in wildfires. However, if you look back a few centuries or more, you find that we have a fire deficit. Many paleoclimate studies document major wildfires long before there was “fire suppression”. Indeed, one study by…
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I recently attended a presentation on invasive weeds by a representative of the Deschutes National Forest. The problem with the presentation was that it promoted and legitimized an industrial paradigm to weed threats. The Forest Service (FS) promotes an Industrial Forestry Paradigm that treats the symptoms, not the causes of ecological degradation. The biggest factors…
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My title may seem excessively harsh by some groups who are doing what they believe is the best way to protect public lands from industrial development. However, when you consider that we have only 2.7% of the lower 48 states in designated wilderness, while at the same time there are calls from many ecologists to…
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Senator Daines and Congressman Gianforte recently published an editorial in many Montana newspapers dealing with forest management that was full of misleading and often false statements. http://helenair.com/opinion/columnists/gianforte-and-daines-forest-plan-will-help-montana/article_4db0f8d7-7216-50f9-974a-d8dd86b6a351.html First, Daines and Gianforte repeat the flawed idea that management results in a “healthy forest.” In fact, active management impoverishes forest ecosystems by removing carbon stored in trees,…
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The proposed Horsefly Vegetation Project (Vegetation Project in the Little Belt Mountains north of White Sulphur Springs on the Helena/Lewis and Clark National Forest is based on numerous false assumptions. The proposal displays both the Forest Service’s lack of professionalism and an Industrial Forestry bias. First, the FS starts out with the assumption that the…
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There is a huge difference between the Industrial Forestry worldview and an ecological perspective. Many people assume that foresters understand forest ecosystems, but what you learn in forestry school is how to produce wood fiber to sell to the wood products industry. I know because I attended a forestry school as an undergraduate in college.…
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With both Senator Daines and Congressman Gianforte sponsoring legislation to remove wilderness study designation for some Montana Forest Service and BLM lands, it behooves us to consider what is at stake. These lands are some of the finest wildlands left in the Nation. Protecting Montana’s wildlands is good for the ecology and economy of the…
