February 2018
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A version of this first appeared in the Idaho State Journal on Feb. 25. Five-maybe ten years ago, I was driving around the backroads of Bannock County and I saw some amazing clouds that looked kind of like UFOs, flying saucers. I had a camera but wanted a photo unmarred by powerlines and…
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The recent response to my editorial on the ecological value of dead trees by Russ Vaughn and Mike Peterson demonstrated exactly the problem I was attempting to address: that the Industrial Forestry Paradigm, not ecological understanding, drives forestry on the Colville National Forest. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/feb/21/russ-vaagen-and-mike-petersen-forests-are-a-source/ Their last paragraph illustrates this industrial bias. Vaughn and Peterson wrote: “The…
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Wyoming counties are currently involved the Public Lands Initiative. Ostensibly 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. Across Wyoming, there are 42 WSAs on BLM lands and three WSAs on Forest Service lands, totaling over 700,000 acres.…
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For thousands of years, humans have been reliant and aware that we are all dependent upon other life to support us. If the caribou or bison herd didn’t come near the village or the salmon failed to materialize in the streams, people starved. We humans intuitively understood that we had an obligation and responsibility to…
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One of the only good things about the failure of Congress to agree upon the future of DACA recipients (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) is that Trump’s fantasy about a border wall was not funded yet (which you may remember Mexico was going to pay for). Many see the Border Wall controversy as a humanitarian…
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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…
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Why Collaboration Won’t Protect our Public Lands By Rick Meis, Halfway, OR Collaboration is a process of playing two sides off against each other in order to create enough guilt in one or all the parties that a compromise is reached. The primary problem is that it is specifically NOT based on science and best…
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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 Statement (DEIS) for…