Category: Forest Service
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Should One Remove Adjacent Vegetation By Homes?
Over the years, I’ve visited dozens of major wildfires to examine how they burned and what they didn’t burn. One noticeable pattern in urban settings is how houses burn to their foundation, while nearby trees and shrubs remain green. Global climate change is exacerbating urban wildfire risks. For instance, between 2003 and 2023, the global…
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Protect Communities Not Log The Forest
A recent article in the Daily Montanan State wildfire briefing indicates fire season ‘could be significant’ that promotes misguided information about wildfire. It starts with Montana Governor Greg Gianforte’s claim that the state firefighters have been able to keep “95% of wildfire starts to 10 acres or fewer since 2021.” What is missing from such…
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Public Lands Welfare Ranchers Again Subsidized By Taxpayers
Livestock are grazed on all federal lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges. Still, most livestock grazing occurs on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service. Even specially protected landscapes that are supposed to be managed for natural conditions, like designated Wilderness areas, are grazed by domestic animals.…
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How Common Were Low Severity Blazes in Western Ecosystem?
A recent article in the Arizona Republic, “The only way to save Arizona forests is to let them burn,” repeats the misguided idea that low-severity/high-frequency fires keep the forest open and park-like, with limited fuels to sustain tree-killing wildfires. In other words, if a fire kills most trees, it is “lost” and “destroyed.” In the…
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Gallatin Range Deserves Wilderness
The Gallatin Range, which runs south from Bozeman into Yellowstone National Park, is the largest unprotected roadless area in the northern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). The range contains some of the best wildlife habitat in Montana. In particular, the Buffalo Horn and Porcupine drainages are critical lands for elk migration, grizzly bears, and numerous other…
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Fix Our Forests Act Doesn’t Fix Forests
Senators Curtis, Hickenlooper, Padilla, and Sheehy introduced Senate 1462 Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA) legislation. Similar legislation has already passed the House of Representatives. FOFA is a solution looking for a problem. Unfortunately, our forests do not have problems; even if they did, FOFA would not fix them. The idea that logging and prescribed burns…
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Trump’s Executive Order To Speed Logging
In March, President Trump declared a national emergency by Executive Order to speed up the logging of our national forests. The order affects more than 112 million acres, larger than the entire state of California. It would remove or nullify most environmental safeguards on our national forests. Trump’s order exempts objections to timber sales by…
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South Cottonwood Proposed Wilderness Threatened
The South Cottonwood drainage in the northern Gallatin Range proposed wilderness lies immediately south of Bozeman, to the west of Hyalite Canyon. The Forest Service’s nearly 8,000-acre Hyalite Cottonwood Hazardous Fuels Reduction Project threatens some of the proposed wilderness. Keep in mind that one acre is approximately equal to a football field. So, imagine what…