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I just received a notice from the Custer Gallatin National Forest CGNF) that they plan to do a Fuels and Forest Health Project in Cooke City, Montana. The Forest Service says the project aims to mitigate wildland fire risks and enhance forest conditions surrounding Cooke City and Silver Gate, Montana. Among the usual claims, the…
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A national chainsaw epidemic exists in America’s woodlands. A recent article in the New York Times titled “Plans for an Ailing Forest Include Logging” exemplifies this trend. In the article, officials in Oregon say that we must cut down the forests—including green trees to arrest the forest health crisis. Conveniently, precisely what constitutes a forest…
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The Deschutes National Forest plans to ramp up prescribed burns across Central Oregon. However, the Forest Service exaggerates the presumed benefits of prescribed burning and ignores the problems. One of the most important issues is that most wildfires never encounter a fuel reduction, whether from thinning or prescribed burns. So, even if prescribed burns were…
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An article in the Oregon Capital Chronicle focuses on cultural and prescribed burning fuel reduction and how they can preclude large wildfires, such as the 127,000 acre Cedar Creek Fire on the Willamette National Forest. The Cedar Creek fire was a wind-driven blaze that occurred during severe drought. The only thing that brought the blaze…
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The 1.6 million acres Deschutes National Forest, Oregon is engaged in an active deforestation effort, all justified based on precluding or slowing wildfires. The Forest also suggests that the logging is “restoring” historical forest conditions. After the spotted owl controversy of the 1980s, the Forest Service lost its social license to log public forests to…
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How many people know that in the state of Washington, more wolves are killed by Native people than any other group? You probably haven’t heard about this, even from wolf advocacy groups. How many conservationists know that Native people are among the staunchest advocates for oil development on Alaska’s North Slope, including in the Arctic…
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On April 24th, 2024, the Vermont Law and Graduate School and Wild Horse Fire Brigade sent a letter to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) District office in Medford, Oregon, proposing a collaboration between the Wild Horse (feral) Fire Brigade and the BLM to reduce wildfire threat through feral horse grazing on the Cascade-Siskiyou National…
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An important question regarding sagebrush ecosystems, and species that rely upon them like sage grouse has to do with exactly what constitutes the fire rotation in sagebrush habitat? And a corrolary question is do current fire management policies emulate these historical conditions? William Baker’s paper, Scaling Landscape Fire History: Wildfires Not Historically Frequent in the…
Author
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.