Region Archives: United States

Pacific Southwest Research Station Ecologist Eric Knapp learned a lesson after the 2021 Antelope Fire burned through long-term research plots in northeastern California. “It was upsetting to think 20 years of research went up in flames,” Knapp said. Knapp and other scientists, initiated studies at this landscape, known as the Goosenest Adaptive Management Area, in the late 1990s. …Shortly after the fire the returned to the 2,300-acre study area to take stock of the damage. …Analysis of the data showed areas previously treated with thinning and prescribed burning fared best, with the most living trees. Untreated control areas where no treatments occurred were in the worst shape. At these sites, high-intensity crown fires completely consumed the needles and branches of many trees, leaving bare, blackened stems. Plots treated with either mechanical thinning or prescribed burns, but not both, came out somewhere in the middle, with about half of the trees dying.

A federal court magistrate has found that the Flathead National Forest has failed to consider the impacts of new road-building projects on grizzly bears and bull trout, saying the United States Forest Service is ignoring science in order to arrive at its approval for the project which has been contested since 2018. Magistrate Kathleen DeSoto said that, like a previous court decision, the Flathead National Forest ignored roads that had been “decommissioned” but still exist and allow for motorized vehicle travel, which is technically illegal, but the USFS acknowledges happens. In the Forest Service’s 2009 plan, officials called for removing many of those roads, but opted to “decommission” them by blocking them, which severely curbed, but didn’t eliminate their use. …The Forest Service or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 14 days to file written objections to DeSoto’s order, or the findings will become permanent. If either party objects, the case will be reviewed by a federal judge.

Don Brunell

As climate change concerns grow, researchers are turning to family tree farmers for assistance. …The American Tree Farm program has emphasized sustainability and managing lands for water quality, wildlife, wood, and recreation. In recent years, it has included climate change. According to the American Forest Foundation, families and individuals collectively care for the largest portion of forests in the U.S., more than the government or corporations and an area larger than California and Texas combined. …Well-managed working forests improve the environment by absorbing carbon dioxide — the primary greenhouse gas —and discharging oxygen. That CO2 is locked in the trees and surrounding soil — a so-called “carbon sink.” Researchers have found that younger, faster growing trees and trees in thinned forests metabolize CO2 rapidly. …What is needed is fair and workable federal, state, and local laws and regulations by which they are governed — and reasonable and affordable taxes and permit fees.

A 2023 University of Idaho study found that the forest products business sector contributed $2.5 billion to Idaho’s gross state product in 2022. …While vital to Idaho’s economy, the forest products sector faces uncertainty due to workforce challenges. Twenty-four percent of the log truck drivers are over the age of 60 and the logging contractor owner/operators have on average 29 years of business experience. Like many Idaho businesses, without a stable workforce, forestry’s tremendous impact on our state’s economy is at risk. But there’s reason for optimism. Recent investments through Idaho’s new Career Ready Students program represent an infusion of both energy and capital in cultivating new pipelines of young talent into Idaho’s forest products sector. In March 2023, Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield, with the help of the Idaho Legislature, secured $45 million to create a new program that would invest in career technical education and career training around our state.

Amidst protests and heated debate, the Oregon Department of Forestry Board (ODF) made a divisive decision on March 7, voting 4-3 to advance a contentious proposal aimed at curbing logging across 640,000 acres of state forests while prioritizing the protection of endangered wildlife. The Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) seeks to align western Oregon’s forests with the federal Endangered Species Act, safeguarding habitats crucial for at least 17 imperiled species. However, the plan also involves reducing timber harvests on state forests, which could lead to diminished revenue for local county services and a decline in employment opportunities in rural areas. It was a day of betrayals and high injustices to the loggers who lined the streets of Salem in protest of the decision that would, in their eyes, seal their fate. Despite fervent appeals from the public and unsuccessful attempts to postpone the decision through three separate motions, the board forged ahead with its vote.

Timber sales in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest often spark conflict between environmental groups, the timber industry, and the U.S. Forest Service which is making the sale. …But a new sale near Petersburg focusing on second-growth trees has all those groups on board. The sale design is the result of the Forest Service changing its public process over the years. …The initial Thomas Bay timber sale proposal was for about 22 million board feet, mostly clear-cut. After a few years of public process, they shrunk the harvest to 12.6 million board feet to be harvested through a patchwork of areas over several years….Harvesting smaller areas over time could be better for wildlife and it could allow small sawmills more opportunities. Those are comments the Forest Service has heard during the public process leading up to the sale.

Oregon lawmakers spent much of the short 2024 legislative session focused on housing regulations and drug criminalization. That often left environmental policies around wildfires, farms and climate change on the back burner. Most efforts to beef up the state’s wildfire resiliency died this session — although a measure limiting the financial pinch for people recovering from wildfires made it through. State worker pension funds will stop investing in coal companies, but a push to get state agencies to buy from clean tech companies failed. Housing legislation that passed included support for immigrant Oregonians, including agricultural farmworkers, but a program helping workers who lose work due to extreme heat or smoke did not get funded. Two bills aimed at guiding the state’s transition to green energy through offshore wind and battery storage did win approval. Here’s a look at some of the top environmental bills that were introduced this session, and where they stand.

Kelly Norris and Senator Barrasso

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator John Barrasso, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (ENR), welcomed Ms. Kelly Norris, Wyoming State Forester, to the committee. Ms. Norris testified at a legislative hearing to examine the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission’s report. Ms. Norris previously testified before the committee in 2023.  “Kelly Norris has testified previously before this committee. She is Wyoming State Forester,” said Senator Barrasso. “She has worked for the Wyoming State Forestry Division for fourteen years. We’re very fortunate to have her because she had experience working as a forester for both the state of Wyoming as well as the U.S. Forest Service. She has a year’s worth of critical on the ground knowledge and is a valuable resource to the community and to this committee.” During the hearing, Barrasso highlighted how Wyoming and other western states are bracing for another devastating wildfire season.  

Congress has given the president the power to create national monuments on public lands. Those monuments are overseen by the Department of the Interior. But Congress has also charged the agency with managing a wide array of other public lands, sometimes for purposes of development instead of preservation. This week,we highlight petitions that ask the court to consider whether Barack Obama had the authority to expand a national monument in the forests of Oregon into land overseen by the Interior Department. At issue in this case are two separate laws. The first law, the Antiquities Act of 1906, gives the president the power to designate areas of land as national monuments and protect them from development. …In the second law, Congress directed the Interior Department to enforce sustainable harvesting of timber in a broad swath of federally owned forest in Oregon, with instructions to ensure both a “permanent forest” and an economic benefit to residents.

A Webinar Series by the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement and the Washington Chapter of The Wildlife Society.

Wildfires and fire seasons are commonly cast as good or bad based largely on the simple metric of area burned (more acres = bad). A seemingly paradoxical narrative frames large fire seasons as a symptom of a forest health problem, while simultaneously stating that fire-dependent forests lack sufficient fire to maintain system resilience. One key to resolving this paradox is placing contemporary fire years in the context of historical fire regimes. Historical regimes can also inform forest restoration efforts by illuminating how much fire area historically maintained (i.e., ‘treated’) fire-resilient landscapes. …Contrary to the common narrative of unprecedented or too-much fire in our dry forest landscapes today, modern fire years are only burning a small fraction of a typical historical year when hundreds of thousands of acres are burned annually on average.

Randy Schillinger

PORTLAND, Oregon —A controversial Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for State Forests that will reduce timber harvests by 34 percent and result in billions of dollars of lost revenue for the next 70 years has been narrowly approved by a divided Board of Forestry. The agency and the Board realized back in January 2023 that the draft HCP would drastically reduce harvest levels and fail to meet the agency’s own objectives. …“No alternatives were ever explored,” said Randy Schillinger, CEO of Hampton Lumber. “There was no reflection, no amendment, no compromise and no consideration for communities and jobs.” …“A few will celebrate passage of this HCP, but anything that excludes and harms this many people is not a win for Oregon,” said Schillinger. …”The amount of forestland arbitrarily set aside in “no touch” zones by ODF is too excessive and has not been well explained or defended. 

Redwoods  can host an entire food web in their crowns with plants, small animals, and more. These biodiversity hotspots are exclusively found in primary or old-growth forests in the wettest part of the redwood range. Two Cal Poly Humboldt faculty are on a mission to restore canopy ecosystems in regenerating or secondary redwood forest. A keystone species in the redwood canopy is Polypodium scouleri, or leather-leaf fern. These ferns, along with the decomposed organic matter that makes up the soil in which they grow, form fern mats. Mats can grow to be 8 feet wide and hold nearly 5,000 gallons of water per acre each year. This ability to collect and hold water may be key to redwood canopy biodiversity success and survival in a warming and drying climate. Cal Poly Humboldt Professor Stephen Sillett and Marie Antoine have embarked on a project that could help re-establish fern mats in redwood canopies.

The Oregon Board of Forestry approved finalization of a habitat conservation plan for western Oregon state forests that will regulate management of those forests for the next 70 years. Serious cuts in projected harvest levels under the plan drew intense criticism from officials from counties and special districts that rely on revenues from the state forest and timber industry representatives. But following a recommendation of approval from State Forester Cal Mukumoto, four board members voted for approval of the plan, saying they did not believe higher harvests could be achieved in compliance with federal statute, while three voted against. …The HCP will govern around 640,000 acres of state forests west of the crest of the cascades that over the past two decades have averaged around 225 million board feet (mmbf) in annual harvests. The plan will establish habitat conservation areas to protect 17 species protected under the National Endangered Species Act.

ARIZONA — Salt River Project is lining up partners for three major thinning projects to protect Payson and other Rim Country communities from wildfire. The three projects will cost almost $4 million and reduce the wildfire threat on nearly 5,000 acres, including a huge swath south of Payson. Last Tuesday, the Gila County Board of Supervisors agreed to kick in $5,000 for the 2,229-acre thinning project along Highway 87 south of Payson. The frequent fire starts along Highway 87, the prevailing summer winds and the brush-choked slopes make this area the most likely path for a megafire to burn up to and through Payson, Carl Melford said. …The U.S. Forest Service, with the help of partners like the Salt River Project, has accelerated efforts to create thinned buffer zones around endangered communities like Payson. 

Vancouver Audubon Society and several other environmental groups are suing the state for failing to protect habitat for the endangered western gray squirrel. “The western gray squirrel is an indicator species for the health of rare oak woodland habitat in Washington. Given the lack of protective regulations, the species’ numbers have continued to decline statewide for decades,” the lawsuit says. “Today, it is widely believed fewer than 1,500 western gray squirrels are left in Washington.” …The western gray squirrel is not to be confused with the prolific eastern gray squirrel common in urban areas. The western variety — also known as Sciurus griseus and in some areas as the Columbian squirrel, Oregon squirrel or silver-gray squirrel — is the largest tree squirrel in the Northwest. It primarily lives in forests and has a range that stretches from northern Mexico through California, Oregon and Washington.

SALEM, Ore. – The Oregon Board of Forestry voted 4-3 to approve the Habitat Conservation Plan on Thursday in Salem, moving it forward for federal approval. Before the meeting, log trucks loaded with logs from Oregon state forests, as well as loggers, legislators, mill workers and others, rallied outside the state’s Department of Forestry headquarters, calling on the board to reject the plan. They say the recommended conservation plan would shut down 57% of harvesting on the state’s forests for the next 70 years, which would lead to a loss of $35-$53 million in annual state revenue. Tasha Webb with Oregon Natural Resource Industries said that lost money would have gone to counties and smaller tax districts to pay for services like emergency response, school districts and law enforcement. …The Association Of Western Pulp And Paper Workers say the plan disregards the livelihoods of thousands of Oregonians and overlooks the sustainable forest management and economic stability in rural communities.

Additional coverage in the Oregon Capitol Chronicle, by Alex Baumhardt: Plan to reduce logging, protect habitat in Oregon’s western state forests passes on split vote

The Oregon Board of Forestry voted Thursday to move forward with a controversial plan that would scale back logging on 640,000 acres of state forests while seeking to protect endangered wildlife. Surrounded by a protest that included lines of logging trucks parked in downtown Salem, a divided board voted 4-3 to send the Western Oregon State Forests Habitat Conservation Plan to federal officials for approval.