Posts by: George Wuerthner
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 […]
Continue Reading →The Western Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies released a report declaring that invasive plants, especially cheatgrass, is an enormous threat to the sagebrush ecosystem and sage grouse. Ironically the report emphasized that invasive weeds are a threat to the livestock industry as well.
The reason it is ironic is that across the West livestock […]
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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 […]
Continue Reading →Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke has directed the National Park Service to reverse Obama-era directives implemented in October of 2015 that prohibited certain “hunting” practices in Alaskan national park units.
Zinke is attempting to reinstate the killing of black bears with cubs and hunting them with dogs, hunting grizzlies over bait like donuts and bacon, […]
Continue Reading →This editorial from Gary Burhue of the Oregon Farm Bureau was written in response to an earlier editorial I had written questioning the impoverishment of the Deschutes River by Ag water withdrawals. This editorial and a previous editorial from Coalition for the Deschutes leaves out critical information in an effort to defend the misuse of […]
Continue Reading →This past winter, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began preparing two Environmental Impact Statements to review the environmental of consequences creating a region-wide series of “fuel breaks” that will add thousands of miles of new linear non-sagebrush habitat across the Great Basin portion of Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Utah.
The goal of fuel breaks […]
Continue Reading →What would you think if you bought a house and after paying for the property, the current owners refused to vacate the property? Worse, yet, the previous owners continued to run their business utilizing your property for their private profit, while degrading the property’s value? Would you not be outraged?
That is exactly what […]
Continue Reading →THE TARGETED GRAZING SCAM
The Idaho BLM is implementing what is sometimes called “targeted grazing” with livestock in an effort to reduce large wildfires. The theory is that if livestock graze enough of the “fuel”, then large wildfires like the 600,000 Murphy Complex or the Soda Fire which burned across southern Idaho in recent years […]
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