Posts by: George Wuerthner
Wyoming counties are currently involved in the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative. The purpose is to determine which Wilderness Study Areas (WSA) should be designated as wilderness and which areas will be released to other land exploitation.
These are public lands that belong to all Americans, not just the residents of any […]
Continue Reading →I wrote this letter to Dr. Naugle more than 10 days ago and have not received a response. It is worth noting that Dr. Naugle has gotten more than $4.5 million in grants to study sage grouse in the past few years. Could this influence his testimony?
Dear Dr. Naugle:
I just read your July […]
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Recently Colorado U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton was quoted during a congressional hearing of the House Natural Resource Committee recommending the government enlist ranchers and farmers to better protect federal lands.
“Some of the best custodians for public lands happen to be our ranchers,” Tipton, R- Cortez, said.
Tipton is ignoring the full […]
Continue Reading →Tree fire scars are used to reconstruct past fire occurrence. These historical reconstructions are often used to guide current forest management on federal lands.
Trees charred but not killed by past fires often form scars where the cambium and inner layers were burnt by fires. A researcher can count the growth rings between scars and […]
Continue Reading →President Trump pardoned Oregon ranchers Dwight Hammond and his son Steve. The pair were jailed for arson and were the inspiration for the take-over of Malheur NWR by the Bundy mob.
Trump’s pardon was based on lobbying by Oregon Congressman Greg Walden who characterized the Hammonds as “responsible ranchers” and portrayed them as victims of […]
Continue Reading →The WPLI is an attempt to garner local agreement on the fate of federal BLM and Forest Service Wilderness Study Areas. These federal lands are managed to retain their potential suitability […]
Continue Reading →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 […]
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This past winter, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began preparing two Environmental Impact Statements to review the environmental consequences of creating a region-wide series of “fuel breaks” that will add thousands of miles of new linear pathways across the Great Basin portion of Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Utah.
The goal of fuel breaks […]
Continue Reading →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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