National Forests across the West are facing dire threats from politicians, the timber industry and the Forest Service. The public is currently being misled into thinking that our forests are “unhealthy”, and that they need to be “restored” due to “beetle infestations” and “insect and disease.” All of this is euphemism to drastically ramp up […]
Continue Reading →Politicians complain of cost then support the wrong solution — more logging The timber industry, politicians and others bemoan the growing cost of firefighting in the West. The proposed solution is more logging of forests in the belief that thinning will reduce the occurrence of large fires and protect communities. However, there are a host […]
Continue Reading →Wildlife management reform objective two-
Recently we discussed the first objective in reforming the broken system of wildlife management we see in America today. That was to restructure the state fish and game departments. Here is the second:
2. Remove Grazing From All Federal Public Lands
Grazing […]
Continue Reading →Senate Tester dissembles.-
Senators Tester and Daines plot suppression of challenges to timber sales-
Timber sales and timber harvest declined on the national forests in the Rocky Mountains during the Clinton Administration. The reason was the withdrawal of subsidies that supported higher levels of timbering.
Unlike the Southern national forests and those west of […]
Continue Reading →White Pine County, Nev. – A Western Watersheds Project appeal forced the Ely BLM to withdraw a recent decision to destroy Wyoming big sagebrush, black sage, and pinyon-juniper communities across the Newark watershed and parts of the Huntington Valley in Nevada. The BLM planned to use the cheatgrass-causing herbicide Tebuthiuron, mowers, bulldozers and […]
Continue Reading →Revisiting Fire History Studies
One of the cornerstones of current forest policy is the assumption that western forests are outside of their “normal” density and appearance or what is termed “historic variability” due a hundred years of mismanagement that included logging of old growth, fire suppression, and livestock grazing. This idea has […]
Continue Reading →Black Forest Colorado fire destroys almost 400 homes-
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Update: On June 20 the Black Forest fire was contained after 500 houses had burned. RM
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The first day of summer is just about here, and wildfires are breaking out across much of the Western […]
Continue Reading →I’ve been studying fire ecology for decades, an interest which led to the publication in 2006 of my book WIldfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy. My interest in wildfire did not end with the book and I have continued to read and digest the fire-related literature, attend conferences, and most importantly visit and observe […]
Continue Reading →Another surprise. The real carbon absorbers are the temperate and boreal forests. Tropical forests are too compromised by humans-
One of the best things that could happen to the future of our existence, IMO, would be the collapse of News Corps in the current scandal. […]
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