Region Archives: US West

Oregon forestry officials will need to manage hundreds of thousands of acres of western state forests to better support critical species, water and air quality and to decrease greenhouse gas emissions under a new management plan the Board of Forestry approved Wednesday. The seven-member board voted 5-2 to pass the 168-page Western Oregon State Forests Management Plan. The new plan, which will guide the Oregon Department of Forestry’s work in 640,000 acres of state forests in 14 counties and mostly in northwest Oregon over the next several decades, will take effect by July 1, 2027. It lays out the priorities, goals and strategies for the department in those forests, which include supporting economies dependent on timber, forest products, agriculture and mining, and a slate of ecological priorities as well: ensuring clean air and water, adapting to and fighting climate change, and protecting wildlife habitat and plant diversity.

SACRAMENTO – At McClellan Air Park, Governor Gavin Newsom highlighted California’s major investments in state-of-the-art fire technology and wildfire prevention, from drones and satellites to advanced camera networks that identify and track wildfires. …Nearly 6 years ago, Newsom met with President Trump … at McClellan Air Park to discuss climate change and the largest wildfires California had ever faced. Trump promised in 2020 that “it’ll start getting cooler.” The facts and science tell the true story: the world has only gotten hotter, and climate impacts have only intensified. …“Technology is transforming how California prepares for wildfire, giving us the power to see threats sooner, position resources before fires start and move mutual aid faster when every second counts,” said California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services Director Caroline Thomas Jacobs. “Governor Newsom’s investments are helping us turn real-time intelligence into action so firefighters and local communities [can] save lives and keep fires from becoming major disasters.” 

As tribes across the West seek the return of federal lands through U.S. Congress, land trusts have advanced a complementary strategy: helping tribes buy back private lands from willing sellers — including timber companies — with public funding and conservation dollars. That approach is also gaining support in Oregon where five federally recognized tribes are pursuing federal legislation that would transfer public lands into tribal ownership. In a letter last week to the state’s congressional delegation … urged lawmakers to invest in tribal acquisitions of private lands while preserving environmental protections and public access on federal lands. …Historically, land trusts focused on buying and preserving environmentally valued land via conservation easements and other deed restrictions [that] limited people’s access to the land or prohibited most human activities. In recent years, the trusts have started to reexamine that approach, particularly when working with tribes who strongly believe that land should exist in relationship with people.

The Altadena and Palisades fires last year were the latest in an escalating series of wildfires in the state. Californians have lost homes, community, and—in some tragic cases—their lives. Wildfires are also raising insurance premiums and threatening the state’s giant sequoias and the headwater regions that provide most of California’s water supply. This year threatens to be another above-average fire season. …The good news is that the state is engaged in an unprecedented multi-agency effort to reduce severe wildfire hazard… In a new report, the Public Policy Institute of California analyzed data from the task force that’s coordinating and tracking these efforts. We found the progress toward the goal accelerated between 2021 through 2024, with an average of 591,000 acres undergoing work to reduce wildfire hazard each year. The task force’s recently released five-year action plan doubles down on the need to prioritize the most at-risk landscapes with a call to “treat the worst first.” 

A bill pitched as a shield against catastrophic wildfire is dividing Northern California over the future of forests like the Shasta-Trinity. The Fix Our Forests Act has lawmakers and conservationists lining up on opposite sides, each claiming the region’s safety is at stake. Supporters argue the legislation cuts through bureaucratic delay, speeding approval for the controlled burns and vegetation-thinning projects meant to reduce fire risk. One provision would let electric utilities holding permits or easements clear vegetation near power lines on federal land without a separate timber sale, a change backers say removes a needless bottleneck. Rep. David Gallagher, who recently won a special election to represent the district, framed the bill as essential in an era of nearly year-round fire seasons, and the measure has drawn support from figures including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Alex Padilla.

A historic drought is turning Colorado’s mountain landscapes into a tinderbox. After last winter’s record-low snowpack, wildland firefighters who continuously monitor indexes of weather and climate data to help predict wildfire risk and how conditions might affect fire behavior say they’re staring down unprecedented levels of dryness. “That lack of snowpack has had a very real impact on the fuels, the vegetation — specifically the large logs that are on the ground,” said Jim King, the fire behavior analyst for the Willow Fire burning near Leadville. “Those are 1,000-hour fuels. The way we measure those in this line of work, they’re just at the very peak. They’re basically as dry as they can get.” …King described how bone-dry logs in the dense forest near Turquoise Lake, along with high winds, contributed to 100-foot columns of flames and extreme fire behavior that at times threw “spots” …more than a half mile ahead of the blaze.

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…Like many states, Oregon is coming off a warm winter that did little to fill the reservoirs of snow that melt in the spring and summer and refresh downstream forestlands. That dryness makes kindling – or “fuels” in the firefighting community – out of brush, shrubs, plants, small trees and the like. About 86% of the state is currently facing drought conditions, according to a June 26 report from the Oregon Water Resources Department. Several counties – a belt stretching from Douglas and Lane counties to Umatilla and Union counties – are facing “extreme” drought conditions. “There was no snow this year,” Craig Pettinger, a unit forester with the Oregon Department of Forestry said. “All those fuels that are usually buried under a blanket of snow, they’ve had sun on them for months.” Firefighters train for worst-case scenarios. On June 26, roughly 200 wildland firefighting trainees completed a five-day academy, which culminated in a controlled burn near the lower Santiam River. 

Officials at the U.S. Forest Service are proposing new management plans for eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains that include potentially tripling the amount of logging across 5.5 million acres in the next decade. The Forest Service published a draft of proposed changes to the 35-year-old Blue Mountain Forest Plan last week. It would allow more logging, mining and grazing across four national forests spread across eastern Oregon, as well as parts of southeast Washington: the Malheur, Ochoco, Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla National Forests. The public has until Sept. 30 to submit comments on the 350-page draft proposal. The draft plan … predicts everything from habitat conservation to forest carbon storage would improve over the long term if more logging is allowed because strategically logging and grazing parts of the forest would prevent wildfire, which officials characterize as the biggest threat to habitat and forest loss. Environmental advocates disagree with the framing.

International ecology conference in Missoula focuses on problem-solving, both in the woods and the lab. The research featured at the event has major implications for Greater Yellowstone. The 15th annual North American Forest Ecology Workshop took place at the University of Montana University Center June 23-26 with 50 concurrent sessions, each featuring at least three experts displaying their latest work. “We went through the first six months of reign of terror, followed by the reign of chaos,” Washington Department of Natural Resources Forest Health Scientist Derek Churchill  said of the Trump administration’s firings and resignations in early 2025, and the subsequent restructuring of U.S. Forest Service and Interior land-management leadership. “We just keep doing the work. A lot of research grants have been going dark, but we’ve still got legacy funding from others. There’s lots of new problems to solve. Forest ecosystems are very dynamic, and we love disturbance. We love studying how they change and adapt.”

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SALT LAKE CITY — In trying to understand why so much of their state has burned this year, some wildfire victims have blamed U.S. Forest Service officials for what they call a lack of forest management. Those officials disputed the claims, saying the state’s drought and fire conditions are so bad that no amount of wildfire mitigation could have prevented the devastation. Andy Anderson, whose family ranch was destroyed in the Cottonwood Fire, accused the U.S. Forest Service of inaction. “The forest service has done nothing for 50, 60 years,” Anderson said. “In the olden days, they used to use the forest.”  …Jamie Barnes, director and state forester for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, said the Beaver area was actually one of the state’s model zones for wildfire prevention — a place she would take people to showcase interagency success. But despite that work, Barnes said extreme conditions overwhelmed years of treatment.

The U.S. Forest Service published an eight-page emergency plan that it says addresses catastrophic wind damage done to federal forest land after two weather emergencies, but environmental watchdog groups say it’s rushed and could result in millions of acres being used for commercial logging with an almost impossibly short public comment period. The project’s scoping document doesn’t disclose which parcels of federal forest land will be logged and treated as part of the emergency plans, but a table shows it could involve more than 5 million acres spanning across Montana and Idaho’s Panhandle. The notice, issued by the USFS Northern Regional office in Missoula, said the “emergency salvage” effort is a response to the straight-line and high wind events in December 2025 and April 2026. The Forest Service said the windstorms created large patches of overturned or “downed” trees.

A new lawsuit challenging a logging project in Oregon threatens to unravel the management plans governing hundreds of millions of acres of federal public land. At stake are thousands of leases and permits covering billions of dollars of economic activity — including mining, drilling, grazing, logging, ski resorts, wind and solar projects, outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing. If successful, the lawsuit could throw the management of huge swaths of the West into chaos. Some experts fear the new legal uncertainty around federal agencies’ management authority could unleash a tsunami of lawsuits targeting everything from mining to the conservation of wildlife habitat. “When you throw that whole system into chaos, it’s a problem whether you’re the oil and gas industry or the timber industry,” said Susan Jane Brown, the attorney who filed the lawsuit and serves as principal at Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm.

Forest fires now burn ten times more acreage annually than in 1985, while wildfire severity has gotten even worse. In California, 30 times more acreage burned from high-severity, forest-killing fires, according to new UCLA research. In the 1980s and 1990s, California’s forest fires burned mostly at low or moderate severity, generally benefiting ecosystems. But as fires have grown in size, severe fires causing widespread tree death have overtaken beneficial fire as the most common fire type in California’s forests. Changes are tied to the increasingly warm and arid environment. These aridity-driven changes were also stronger in more densely forested areas, said senior author Park Williams. …The two main causes for the increase in fire severity are fuel density [and] environmental dryness. …The researcher’s conclusions show that the state can make some headway in protecting California’s forests with changes in forest management, such as doing more manual clearing of underbrush and conducting more prescribed burns.

PHOENIX — New technology is coming to Arizona to predict flooding and prevent wildfires. Moisture sensors are going in the ground to gauge just how dry the land is. Soil that is too dry cannot absorb water, which creates a higher risk for flooding and wildfires. This advancement should help predict wildfires and flooding across Arizona. Salt River Project (SRP) officials say plant moisture, in both dead and alive plants, is one of the most important indicators of wildfire danger. However, taking field samples by hand is tough, so this new technology will do the heavy lifting. SRP crews in the Tonto National Forest are planting tiny pieces of technology in the ground to provide data. …These moisture measurements should provide important clues, like the risk of a wildfire at a given location, how likely it is to spread, how big it might get, and predicting floods.

The U.S. Forest Service will hold a single public comment period with a Monday deadline on a huge project to salvage wind-toppled timber across vast sections of six national forests in northern Idaho and western Montana. Calling it an emergency that poses imminent threats to “life, property, and important natural, cultural, or historic resources,” the federal land management agency intends to use emergency authorities and new rules governing environmental analysis and endangered species consultation to expedite what is otherwise a deliberative process that can take years to complete. “The expediency with which this is being handled is in response to that emergency being declared by the president and the Forest Service response to that declaration,” said agency spokesperson Sara Rouse. …Mike Reggear, agency resource manager for the Idaho Forest Group, said the Forest Service isn’t set up to respond with the speed needed to salvage timber killed by events like windstorms and fire. 

MONTANA — More than 190,000 acres of recommended wilderness in the Flathead National Forest could be opened up to off-road vehicles (ORVs), according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture secretarial memorandum that leaked earlier this month. The memo, which laid out federal officials’ plans to unwind protections that have been in place in northwest Montana since 2018, prompted local and national advocacy groups to rush to action. Following four years of interagency collaboration, environmental analysis and an extensive public participation process, the Flathead National Forest’s Revised Land Management Plan was officially adopted in 2018, designating 193,403 acres of land as recommended wilderness… The New York Times earlier this month reported that a leaked memo directed the use of ORVs on 5 million acres in Montana and Idaho, 193,403 acres of which are within recommended wilderness areas on the Flathead National Forest. Local stakeholders say the directive would unwind years of collaborative work if it comes to fruition.

Colorado nonprofit, the Mountain Pine Beetle Foundation, is working to help landowners fight back against growing infestations of mountain pine beetles and protect their properties from wildfires. Founder Wesley Manney said the organization’s goal is simple: stop beetle infestations before they grow and reduce wildfire risk at the same time. What started as a handful of infested trees in Evergreen, Colorado, has turned into hundreds for landowner Jon Hager. …Now, crews are cutting down and chipping dozens of beetle-killed and infested trees on his property as part of an effort to slow the spread of mountain pine beetles, which experts warn could become a bigger problem during Colorado’s dry summer conditions. “It’s our responsibility as landowners,” Hager said. “We should take care of the beetle problem so it doesn’t spread to our neighbours.”

The US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is funding two landscapes within the Boise and Payette national forests for inclusion in the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP). The congressionally funded program provides long-term support for partnership-driven projects that improve watershed health, reduce wildfire risk and strengthen local economies. The West Central Idaho Initiative covers 2.3 million acres of public and private lands stretching from Boise to New Meadows, Idaho. The initiative focuses on reducing wildfire risk to communities through logging, thinning and prescribed fire. The area was chosen for a 10-year funding commitment based on its strong history of collaboration. …The Weiser-Little Salmon Headwaters landscape continues CFLRP involvement dating back to 2012. In the first 10 years of funding, projects there treated nearly 170,000 acres of hazardous vegetation, resulting in the equivalent of about 36,000 logging trucks of timber sold. 

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When heat waves hit the Western United States, the risk of wildfires quickly rises. The prolonged heat dries out vegetation, but that’s only part of the cause – heat waves also play other roles in spreading wildfires. In a new study, our team of fire and climate scientists looked at two decades of wildfire activity in the West, from 2001 to 2024, and for the first time quantified the effect of heat waves on those fires. We expected a big impact, but the numbers still surprised us: While heat waves, which we defined as three or more consecutive days with temperatures in the top tenth of hottest days, accounted for only 12% to 15% of warm-season days, we found that 42% of all the area burned by fires had occurred during or right after a heat wave. Moreover, the amount of the area that burned each day was more than 50% larger during heat waves than during the cooler days right before the heat wave began in many parts of the West. In some regions, the difference was much larger – up to 300%.

RONALD, Wash. — The sound of wildfire prevention isn’t a fire engine siren. It’s chainsaws, wood chippers and heavy machinery chewing through brush. Across Kittitas County, crews are removing smaller trees, trimming limbs and clearing brush in an effort to reshape forests before the next wildfire season arrives. But the work underway here is also challenging one of the most deeply held ideas many people have about forests: That more trees always means a healthier forest. “Green is good,” said Katie Zander, the North Service Forestry coordinator for the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Southeast Region. “But out here historically we did not have this dense of forest stands.” According to Zander, eastern Washington forests evolved with regular low-intensity fires that naturally cleared out brush and smaller trees. But decades of aggressive wildfire suppression changed that pattern.

SEATTLE — Weyerhaeuser Company announced the fifth year of its Fighting Fires Together campaign, combining the company’s wildfire management and community support efforts across Oregon. The campaign unifies support for rural fire districts, wildfire response partnerships, and resources that strengthen firefighter and community resilience in fire-prone areas of the state. The campaign addresses the realities of wildfire response in rural Oregon, where communities and agencies often face limited resources to protect both residents and wildland firefighters. …Across Oregon, grants from the company’s Giving Fund help rural fire protection districts secure critical rescue, medical and wildland firefighting tools, along with expanded training to support faster, safer responses when wildfires occur. …Additionally, Weyerhaeuser is supporting the next generation of wildland firefighters and forestry professionals. A recent $10,000 grant to Lane Community College’s Wildland Fire Management Program will support funding for tools and safety equipment… 

The Trump administration is about to propose an overhaul of how it manages nearly 5 million acres in northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. Logging could triple in the Umatilla, Malheur and Wallowa-Whitman national forests, which comprise the U.S. Forest Service’s Blue Mountains region. The agency’s proposal would eliminate regulations that protect large trees and sensitive habitats. It would also boost timber sale goals from 106 million board feet to 364 million over a decade. That’s raising hopes in a region where timber jobs have declined and lumber mills have closed. But others doubt the timber goals. And environmental groups have called the plan a raid on one of the wildest places in the United States. …Mark Webb, executive director of Blue Mountains Forest Partners — which coordinates between environmental and timber interests to find common ground — doubts whether the forest service can reach the ambitious logging goals it sets forth in its draft proposal.

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz today signed the Montana Tri-Forest Federal Sustained-Yield Unit management plan that will support economic stability, strengthen central Montana’s wood processing capacity and advance forest health though timber harvests that will be processed within the boundaries of the unit. The Tri-Forest unit includes the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Custer Gallatin and Helena-Lewis and Clark national forests. Leadership from these forests will work together to provide forest products that support local economic stability, strengthen central Montana’s wood-processing capacity and advance forest health in alignment with existing forest plans.  

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has declared an emergency due to the imminent threat of wildfires in the state. “Increasing heat, dry vegetation, and shifting winds continue to align and create dangerous conditions that demand immediate action,” Kotek said in a press release Tuesday morning. “I am declaring a State of Emergency to ensure all available resources — firefighting crews, aerial support, ground resources, and emergency personnel are prepared for deployments — to protect people, property, and our natural landscapes.” The declaration ensures that the Oregon Department of Forestry and the state fire marshal’s office have the wildfire crews and equipment they need. And it directs the Oregon Department of Emergency Management to activate the state’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. From Tuesday morning through Tuesday evening, the National Weather Service in Pendleton declared a red flag warning throughout much of eastern Washington and northeast Oregon.