Category: States
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What We Can Learn From The North Rim Grand Canyon Blaze
The Dragon Bravo Fire that recently destroyed the Grand Canyon Lodge at Grand Canyon National Park has devolved into a “firestorm” of accusations of mismanagement of wildfires. The loss of the lodge and other structures ignores several important conclusions one can take away from the blaze. The first is that allowing natural ignitions from lightning…
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Should We Garden Our Forests?
A new study published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management “Significant mortality of old trees across a dry forest landscape, Oregon,” found that older larch and ponderosa pine are suffering increased death rates. The main author, James Johnston, formerly at Oregon State University Forestry School, now at the University of Oregon’s Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities, and…
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TNC Misinformation On Wildfire
The recent June 18th editorial in the Oregon Capital Chronicle by the Nature Conservancy representatives, “Oregonians deserve a smarter approach to wildfires: Both suppression and risk reduction are necessary,” was based upon flawed assumptions about wildfire. It is worth noting that TNC has a conflict of interest since it receives significant funding from the federal…
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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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Rewilding a Mountain
How removing cattle led to a massive ecological recovery
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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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Irrigation for Livestock–Destroying Western Rivers
A recent newspaper article noted that a large resort ranch along the base of Montana’s Crazy Mountains was using water for irrigation on a golf course. Worse, according to the news account, the ranch did not have water “rights” to use this water. Many people are outraged. While we can debate whether using scarce water…
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House Tax Bill Accelerates Public Lands Resource Exploitation
The debate over provisions in the recently approved House tax legislation (Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill) has numerous environmentally destructive provisions which I will get to in a moment. However, one victory amid the unbridled promotion of resource development was the removal of an amendment that permitted the sale of 450,000 acres of public lands across…