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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 BOSH project in southern Idaho ultimately plans to destroy tens of thousands of acres of juniper woodlands on BLM lands. BOSH stands for Bruneau-Owyhee Sagebrush Habitat Project. The advocates of the BOSH project use pejorative language to characterize the Juniper clearing from the landscape. Terms like “restoring” the “natural” condition of the land assume…
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Back in 2017, the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, the supposed ‘crown jewel’ of the BLM’s National Landscape Conservation System proposed a massive pinyon-juniper (P-J) removal project in the Skutumpah area. The BLM announced that the project’s purpose was to remove post-European settlement ‘invading’ P-J and create sage grouse habitat. Given my experience that virtually…
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In 2022, when private timber lands adjacent to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument (KWWNM) became available, a member of Maine’s Congressional delegation introduced legislation to authorize the National Park Service to acquire nearly 43,000 acres of land to add it to the national monument. President Barack Obama created Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument…
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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 Bureau of Land Management oversees 245 million acres of public land across the U.S. More than 60% of that rangeland is being managed through leased livestock grazing allotments in Oregon and nine other Western states. But according to the nonpartisan Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, livestock grazing is the main reason why nearly 60…
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This past week, the Trust for Public Lands announced that it had secured a conservation easement for 13,000 acres in Northwest Montana as part of the Lost Trail Conservation Area. The easement precludes subdivision of the land for housing tracts and allows the landowner, Green Diamond, to continue its forestry operations. Advocates of this…
