Currently viewing the category:
"Wildfire"
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 […]
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 →Logging, conducted ostensibly to “thin the forest”, “reduce fuels” or for so-called “restoration”, causes a net loss of carbon from forest ecosystems.
One of the best strategies for reducing CO2 levels is by protecting our forests. Yet few environmental groups, even those who focus on climate change, advocate for the reduction of logging on […]
Continue Reading →Senator Daines and Congressman Gianforte recently published an editorial in many Montana newspapers dealing with forest management that was full of misleading and often false statements.
http://helenair.com/opinion/columnists/gianforte-and-daines-forest-plan-will-help-montana/article_4db0f8d7-7216-50f9-974a-d8dd86b6a351.html
First, Daines and Gianforte repeat the flawed idea that management results in a “healthy forest.” In fact, active management impoverishes forest ecosystems by removing carbon stored in trees, […]
Continue Reading →There is a huge difference between the Industrial Forestry worldview and an ecological perspective. Many people assume that foresters understand forest ecosystems, but what you learn in forestry school is how to produce wood fiber to sell to the wood products industry. I know because I attended a forestry school as an undergraduate in college.
[…]
Continue Reading →The Idaho BLM is proposing to remove juniper from over 600,000 acres of land in the Owyhee River area of southern Idaho ostensibly to benefit nesting sage grouse. Sage grouse avoid treed areas, so the idea is to cut down juniper to increase sage grouse habitat quality.
While there is no doubt from the literature […]
Continue Reading →The Forest Service is currently seeking public comments regarding the development of alternatives for the Forest Plan Revision on the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests in North Central Idaho. The deadline is February 28. The new forest plan will guide management direction over the next 10 – 30 years. A Draft Environmental Impact […]
Continue Reading →Montana GOP Senator Daines recently published a simplistic and misleading guest commentary on a wildfire in the Washington Post.
In that editorial, Daines, like many other misinformed logging proponents claims more logging would reduce large wildfires and he blames “environmental extremists” for delaying the forest reduction projects.
Most of the wildfires burning under […]
NASA just reported the drought in eastern Montana is so severe it is a once in a century event.
Not surprisingly, despite livestock grazing that some suggest could preclude large blazes, the drought in Eastern Montana has spawned some recent blazes including the 270,000-acre Lodgepole fire. The fire raced across grazed public and private pasture […]
Continue Reading →During the 1992 election campaign, Bill Clinton famously coined the phrase:
It’s the “economy, stupid” to admonish George H.W. Bush for his failure to understand the real problem facing voters.
Today the timber industry and Forest Service continuously advocate logging to reduce fuels and assert that this will reduce large wildfires. But fuels […]
