Logging
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Collaboratives have been initiated on many national forests across the West. The stated goal is to resolve controversial resource issues through cooperative discussions between various interests, Thus collaboratives typically include representatives of industry such as timber companies, ranchers, local tourist promotion, county commissioners, Forest Service, BLM, FWS, state and county government, and state wildlife agency…
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There are widely held assumptions that logging will reduce or preclude large wildfires and beetle outbreaks. The recent adoption of the Farm Bill categorical exclusion that will permit logging up to 45 million acres of national forests is based on flawed assumptions about forest health and wildfire. LARGE WILDFIRE CLIMATE DRIVEN Large fires are driven…
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I’ve been studying fire ecology for decades, an interest which led to the publication in 2006 of my book WIldfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy. My interest in wildfire did not end with the book and I have continued to read and digest the fire-related literature, attend conferences, and most importantly visit and observe…
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The Supreme Court recently ruled in an 7-1 vote (Justice Stephen Breyer recused himself) that the EPA regulations about water pollution as mandated by the Clean Water Act did not apply to sediment and other pollution from logging operations. The timber industry is rejoicing over the ruling. But citizens should be less sanguine than industry.…
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I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees. It seems more and more there are fewer conservation organizations who speak for the forest, and more that speak for the timber industry. Witness several recent commentaries in Oregon papers which are by no means unique. I’ve seen similar themes from other conservation groups in the…
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”At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but…
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Collaboration is all the rage. How it has worked in Montana- Past stories here at The Wildlife News have not been very friendly to the process called “collaboration” although we have not written about it for a while. That does not mean it has disappeared nor become friendly to conservation of our forests, grasslands, sage…
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Tiny herd spends most of its time in British Columbia- The woodland caribou have been on the endangered species list for a long time, several million dollars have been spent on their conservation. That might sound like a lot, but it is a total over many years. They depend on old growth rain forest, living…