Currently viewing the category: "Colorado"

Thinning/logging at Newberry Crater National Monument, Deschutes National Forest, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner 

One of the arguments alleged by proponents of thinning or logging forests is that it will reduce the size of wildfires and hence carbon emissions from blazes. Proponents argue that more trees survive a fire if there has […]

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Lowery Ruins, part of the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner 

Livestock grazing threatens the integrity of Colorado’s Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Located in SW Colorado near Cortez,  President Clinton established the 176,000 acre Monument in 2000 to protect one of the highest concentrations of archeological sites […]

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Fire Suppression Myths

On January 11, 2022 By

Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear in the media and from the Forest Service that fire suppression is responsible for the intensity and size of wildfires.

According to proponents, a “hundred years of fire suppression” has permitted the build-up of fuels, and by their assertion, more fuel results in larger conflagrations.

However, […]

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Recent news stories focus on how a conservation easement on a large ranch in northwest Colorado is blocking a major new transmission line, and therefore stalling the enormous Chokecherry-Sierra Madre wind farm in southcentral Wyoming. While these articles make some valid points about the need for renewable energy, they gloss over the reality that […]

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J.T. Romatzke, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Regional Manager for northwest Colorado, has been caught red-handed conspiring with anti-wildlife lobbyists to undermine the state Parks and Wildlife Commission. Its scandalous and improper, and Romatzke should have been immediately relieved of his position. Instead, even after substantiating the allegations, the state government stood by Romatzke and then […]

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Thinned lodgepole pine forest on Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest. As often is the case, thinning puts more “fine” fuels on the ground which can promote fire spread. Photo George Wuerthner 

Montana Senator Daines announced that he intends to reintroduce wildfire legislation co-sponsored by California Senator Diane Feinstein that, among other things, would […]

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To many foresters and others who advocate for “active forest management,” a fire that results in high tree mortality is considered evidence of an “unhealthy” forest. Photo George Wuerthner 

This past week I was invited to present my views on forest health and fire ecology to a group of Washington State […]

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Coauthored by Greta Anderson and Dave Parsons

The Arizona Game and Fish Department has been busy promoting recently published research which documents ample habitat for Mexican wolves in Mexico. This supports the recovery criteria in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s official recovery plan and the Department’s desire to assume […]

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Glacier National Park is home to 30-40 wolverine. Photo George Wuerthner 

On December 14, 2020, 24 organizations and one individual (me) filed two different lawsuits to challenge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) decision not to list the wolverine as a threatened Distinct Population Segment (DPS) under the Endangered Species […]

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Textual Manipulations in Anti-wolf Rhetoric

Less than three months from now Colorado will decide whether to support Initiative 107, otherwise known as the Gray Wolf Reintroduction Initiative.  Polling done as recently as August of 2019 by Colorado State University found that 84% of Coloradans support reintroduction and suggests that the initiative will almost certainly pass.  […]

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Quote

‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."

~ Edward Abbey