Region Archives: United States

Nick Smith

Actively managing Washington’s state trust lands and using locally sourced wood is a far better climate solution than leaving forests unmanaged. It is also better than “leasing” these public lands to private interests so polluters can keep polluting. The ongoing campaign to shut down these public working forests ignores the fact that timber harvesting is already prohibited on roughly half of all state trust lands in Western Washington. …These “protected” lands have abundant old growth and mature stands, but also tend to be unnaturally overstocked and vulnerable to carbon-emitting wildfires, insects and disease that increase tree mortality and decay. …If consumers and business are not using wood that’s grown, harvested and made here in Washington, we experience “leakage” effects, such as the importing of wood products from other countries, and “substitution” effects where more carbon-intensive projects, including concrete and steel are used instead of wood. These factors can’t be disregarded in the pursuit of a narrow political agenda.

In addition to more dry eastern Oregon wildfires, we’re likely to experience more wildfires in the wetter western part of the state. “Wildfire is not an ‘if,’ but a ‘when,’ living in Oregon,” said Alison Green, a spokeswoman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal. …Because of all this, the Oregon State Fire Marshal wants Oregonians to create more defensible space around their homes. That is more area between the house and potential wildfire, where vegetation has been modified to reduce the threat and help firefighters defend the house. mThe state fire marshal has set up a number of new programs to help: One involves bringing wood chippers into vulnerable areas so people can chop-up their yard debris for free. Another helps communities clear combustible fuels out of greenway spaces.

OREGON — Activists from the group Pacific Northwest Forest Defense ascended into the uppermost branches of an approximately 150-foot-tall ponderosa pine in southern Oregon. Nearby, they said, road construction for the Poor Windy Forest Management Project, operated by wood product manufacturer Boise Cascade and approved by the Bureau of Land Management, had already begun. While the pine was not part of the project’s timber sale, it stood in the path of a planned road, in danger of becoming a collateral cost. For three weeks, a handful of activists took turns in the tree, sitting on a wooden platform 120 feet in the air. By April 23, the BLM had amended its contract with Boise Cascade. High Country News recently spoke with two Wolf Creek tree-sitters, both of whom chose to use pseudonyms to protect themselves from future legal consequences. 

PAYSON, Arizona — Smoke billowed from Diamond Rim on the Tonto National Forest on Monday afternoon as a helicopter bobbed along overhead, dropping tiny fireballs to stoke flames on the ground. The federally contracted chopper is based for this spring and summer at a new, $4.9 million U.S. Forest Service helicopter base in Star Valley that will aid in both fighting wildfires and igniting prescribed burns like the one on the ridge. The Payson Ranger District’s helitack team, which fights fires via helicopter, at times rappelling to the forest floor, has moved there from trailers that it formerly worked out of at the Payson airport. The Forest Service started work last week on burning some 5,500 acres of brush and dense woodlands north of Payson… to reduce fuels available for what could be an active fire season as drought creeps back across Arizona after a relatively wet 2023.

There was a time when communities all across the Northwest would host logging shows and competitions to celebrate the forest product industries. Local loggers would pit their skills against some of the best in the world in events like pole climbing, axe throwing, and the crowd-favorite “hot saw” competitions. And the best of those shows, and smaller competitions, featured the pros and the amateurs, giving “loggers” of various skill levels from British Columbia to Forks to Flagstaff a chance to compete. Today, there’s only one Pro/Am event, and it’s coming this weekend in Missoula. “Forestry Day” at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula was a relatively recent addition to the timber competition circuit, starting a little less than 30 years ago. Originally conceived as a way to both celebrate and preserve the legacy and importance of the timber products industry, it’s ended up doing just that.

A critical tree species found in some of America’s most revered national parks is in decline, leading researchers to embark on a race to prevent more from dying off. Whitebark pine, or Pinus albicaulis, is a keystone tree species found in the greater Yellowstone area, play a critical role in the ecosystem in the greater Yellowstone area, Laura Jones, branch chief of vegetation ecology at Grand Teton National Park, said. But the already few whitebark pine trees that exist on the rooftops of the Teton mountain range are dwindling quickly, and the impacts — while still unknown — could be a major disruption to the ecosystem, experts said. …One of the key steps to conserving the species is identifying the trees that are resistant to the pine rust and promoting those trees on the landscape, Jones said.

The Bureau of Land Management oversees much of Utah’s land for grazing, oil and gas, mining and logging. On April 18, the agency published the new Public Lands Rule that puts conservation on par with those commercial uses in an endeavor to build resilience to climate change. The BLM says that the rule restores balance on public lands by establishing “restoration and mitigation leases” and clarifying protections for Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. …Conservation groups laud the rule, arguing that it fills gaps in the current implementation of the agency’s mandate… But industry representatives and Utah politicians say that the change poses a threat to their lifestyles and livelihoods. …Sen. Mike Lee said, “This misguided rule will hamper critical projects such as mineral extraction and strike a harsh blow to small family-run businesses dependent on BLM land access.” Rep. John Curtis agreed, adding it will allow private companies to capitalize on public land.

AUSTRALIA — Some reports have argued that extensive areas of Australia’s forests were kept open through frequent burning by First Nations people. Advocates for widespread thinning and burning of these forests have argued that fire is needed to return these forests to their “pre-invasion” state. A key question then is: what does the evidence say about what tall, wet forests actually looked like 250 years ago? …In a new paper, we looked carefully at the body of evidence. Our analysis shows most areas of mainland mountain ash forests were likely to have been dense and wet at the time of British invasion. The large overstorey eucalypt trees were relatively widely spaced, but there was a dense understorey. …The evidence we compiled all indicates mountain ash forests were dense, wet environments, not open and park-like. …Based on this evidence, we should not be deliberately burning or thinning these forests.

MINNESOTA — The U.S. Forest Service is gearing up to launch a spruce budworm response project in Cook County this summer as the prevalence of the spruce budworm expands across northeastern Minnesota. Spruce budworm, a native insect that feeds on the needles of spruce and balsam fir, fluctuates in 30-40-year cycles. The last influx of spruce budworm occurred in the 1980s in Cook County. As a preventative mitigation effort, this summer, the Forest Service intends to implement a Blue Cascade Spruce Budworm Response and Restoration Project stretching from the Caribou Trail to County Road 14, east of Grand Marais. The entire project will encompass over 2000 acres and focus on vegetation management, reducing hazardous fuels, and minimizing the density of spruce plantations to allow for more ecologically appropriate mixed-forest types.

“Urban forestry matters because that’s where people live. So, if we want to help people, we have to go where they are,” said Francisco Escobedo, a research social scientist with the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station. …Communities can plant trees and glean many benefits from urban forests, said Escobedo. These benefits include reducing summer peak temperatures, improving air quality, reducing stormwater run-off, increasing property values, providing wildlife habitat, and strengthening neighborhood social connections. …Los Angeles averages about 267 days of sun a year. Its rays beat down on rooftops, roads, parking lots, cars and the tops of heads. About a fifth of the city’s trees and the shade they provide grow where only 1% of its residents live. This scarcity is not lost on Los Angeles and county city planners, who have recently been coming together to grow urban forests in the nation’s second-largest city.

HELENA, Montana — Two conservation groups and the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have reached a settlement on a lawsuit over a a 20-year logging and burning project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, the plaintiffs said. Native Ecosystems Council and Alliance for the Wild Rockies said the Middleman Project that they stopped over 110 miles of road construction and reconstruction in the forest and halted over 5,000 acres of commercial logging in lynx and grizzly habitat. …The project, approved in 2021, was meant to reduce wildfire fuels and improve forest health and rangeland habitat conditions, forest officials said. It was also designed to maintain and improve water quality and aquatic habitat through a variety of methods including logging. The conservation groups sued in September, saying the project violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.