Region Archives: US West

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) is seeking feedback on a public lands project that would furnish permanent protections on nearly 33,000 acres of private timberland in northwest Montana while precluding development on a patchwork of forestland surrounding the Thompson Chain of Lakes between Kalispell and Libby. …FWP is working with The Trust for Public Land (TPL) and Green Diamond Resource Company to identify funding sources for the potential easement. …Under the terms of the easement, which provide for public recreation access and the preservation of wildlife habitat, Green Diamond would retain ownership of the land under an easement owned by FWP. The easement would allow Green Diamond to sustainably harvest wood products from its timberlands. It is the first of a potential two-phased project totaling 85,792 acres of private timberland. …“Green Diamond has essentially offered to donate 35% of the value of this easement,” Dillon Tabish said.

Two aerial firefighting jets, including one based in Missoula, have been grounded because of corrosion apparently caused by a new fire retardant the U.S. Forest Service approved for use beginning last year. Two large air tankers — passenger jets converted to carry 3,000 gallons of retardant each — used a magnesium chloride fire retardant product while fighting wildfires last year. Both are grounded pending a joint investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Forest Service. The magnesium chloride retardant was in limited use last fire season, loaded into the two large air tankers and some smaller, single-engine aircraft also in Montana. After the discovery this winter of corrosion in areas of tankers where the retardant accumulated, the Forest Service decided not to use it this year. Instead, the agency will continue its widespread use of ammonium phosphate fire retardant that has been the go-to retardant nationwide for years. 

In a monumental move within the timber industry, Rayonier Inc. has set the stage for a most significant timberland transactions in recent history. The Clallam Tree Farm, a property in the heart of the Pacific Northwest’s Olympic Peninsula, is now up for sale. The Clallam Tree Farm spans 115,250 acres of forestland. The property is located within the Douglas-fir region of the upper-west Olympic Peninsula. With nine miles of the North Fork of the Calawah River meandering through its expanse and neighboring the Olympic National Forest, this property stands as a testament to managed forestry. Rayonier’s decision to put the Clallam Tree Farm on the market marks the first time this property has been available for acquisition since the 1940s. With nearly eight decades of stewardship, the property is a legacy of sustainable forest management. …Their website invites prospective buyers to participate in a single-stage, sealed-bid process, with bids due on June 6, 2024. 

Josh Becker

Insurers in California have sounded the alarm: A warming climate has dramatically raised the risk of devastating wildfires, and with it the cost of providing coverage. But those insurance companies should credit the state and homeowners for the work done to reduce our vulnerability to wildfires, says State Sen. Josh Becker (D), who has introduced a bill that would require insurers require insurers to consider the state’s efforts to thin flammable brush and trees as well as property owners’ steps to make their homes more fire resistant, such as covering vents and clearing vegetation. Those efforts would need to be incorporated into their risk modeling to determine coverage decisions and costs. …The American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said the bill “has several complicating factors to consider.” …Becker said the proposed law wouldn’t mandate any particular discount or result, only for insurers to account for wildfire risk reduction efforts. 

Colorado can expect a normal wildfire season this year, very similar to last, as the state flexes enhanced firefighting practices in the wake of devastating fires. The Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control (DFPC) outlined the state wildfire preparedness plan to Gov. Jared Polis during a press conference on Wednesday. …Behind the speakers stood the newest addition to Colorado’s air tanker fleet, a brand-new S-70 Firehawk. Based on the military Blackhawk helicopter, the Firehawk is classified as a type I helicopter air tanker, meaning it is the largest and fastest type of firefighting helicopter. The Firehawk can carry 1,000 gallons of water or fire retardant. …The state of Colorado paid $2.3 million last year for pilots and mechanics for the helicopter, even as it sat in a hanger unused. After purchasing the $24 million whirlybird in 2021, it generated so much excitement in the legislature, they earmarked an additional $26 million for a second

Nich Smith

The Western timber industry is in crisis. The region has lost over a half-dozen wood processing facilities so far in 2024, and more will likely close. This is not just another economic blow to our rural communities; it signals a broader failure of the federal government to align the management of public lands with the health of our forests and wood products sector. Despite billions of dollars in new government spending, and strong bipartisan support in Congress for forest management, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are paralyzed by anti-forestry litigation, obstruction and bureaucratic red tape… which not only prevent efforts to reduce wildfire risks, they depress regional timber supplies that industry depends. …The administration and Congress should ensure that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management work in partnership with industry to help meet these pressing economic and environmental challenges.

Kendall Cotton

Just in time for Earth Day on April 22, Gov. Greg Gianforte recently announced the state has placed over 36,000 acres of Montana forest land under active forest management in 2023, nearly triple the total acres actively managed in 2020. More active forest management is great news for those who love Montana’s “clean and healthful” environment and want to improve the global climate. It’s unfortunate when the average person thinks about the front lines of environmental conservation and addressing climate change, they are probably far more likely to picture an activist like Greta Thunberg tweeting out pictures of protests from her iPhone than a Montana logger hard at work out in the woods….Wildfires send billions of tons of emissions into the atmosphere when they burn every year. …Healthy, actively managed forests are robust carbon sinks that sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Diana Tomback

Dorena Genetic Resource Center near Cottage Grove, Ore., scientists are collecting whitebark pine cones, growing seedlings, examining them for resilience to disease and then gathering cones from the strongest survivors. Those select seeds are then used to grow hundreds of thousands of baby trees in nurseries and plant them across the West. …Whitebark pine trees …stretches across 80 million acres in seven western states and two Canadian provinces. Now, one of the West’s few tree species able to survive on cold, windy ridgetops and steep slopes at alpine and subalpine elevations is in serious trouble. A blister rust, a nonnative fungus has become an existential threat to the pines, says Diana Tomback, one of the foremost researchers of the unique relationship between whitebark pines and Clark’s nutcracker. …Tomback says work on the National Whitebark Pine Restoration Plan started in 2016 — six years before the tree was listed as threatened.

In this era of accelerating climate crisis, accounting for all aspects of Earth’s carbon cycle is a crucial task. The magnitude of atmospheric carbon burden means trees and forests are limited but important instruments among a suite of mitigation options. …Understanding the role of forests requires accurate quantification of biomass, approximately half of which is carbon. Technological advances and the urgency of the problem have motivated international efforts toward biomass mapping. Airborne and spaceborne laser scanning hold great promise, and remote sensing is tempting to rely upon given its efficiency in covering large areas. However, these endeavors are of questionable value until their estimates are validated by direct measurements. A new article published in Forest Ecology and Management embraces this challenge for the world’s tallest forests. …While technological advances continue to enhance the scope of forestry research, boots-on-the-ground measurements remain essential and will provide meaningful work for generations to come.

Forest Service crews and contractors are scrambling to set as much forest on fire as possible. The increasingly narrow window of the season for prescribed fire is upon us. The time between when the forest is dry enough to burn but wet enough to contain those burns has grown increasingly compressed. The Tonto, Coconino and Apache Sitgreaves forests all sent out notices warning communities to expect smoke from nearby controlled burns to smudge the sky and maybe even send smoke drifting through town. ……None of those communities were built with Wildlands-Urban Interface codes. …So thinning projects followed by prescribed burns remain the best tool for protecting those communities, which rank among the most fire-menaced in the country. …However, figuring out how to cover the cost of thinning some 4 million acres of Ponderosa pine forest in Northern Arizona is just the start of the policies needed to restore the forest.

Jaiden Stansberry

The day before Jaiden Stansberry submitted her Truman Scholarship application — an involved process that includes 14 essays, a policy proposal and multiple interviews — she spent hours alongside her classmates razing a makeshift logging town constructed in the University of Montana’s Schreiber Gym for the 105th Foresters’ Ball. …“After deconstruction, the next day I was at the library fixing all my Truman Scholarship essays,” Stansberry said with a laugh, noting with pride that her team tore down the timber in record time. …Truman Scholars demonstrate outstanding leadership potential, commitment to a career in government or the nonprofit sector, and academic excellence. After a rigorous application, those selected receive $30,000 in funding for graduate studies, leadership training, career counseling and special internship opportunities within the federal government. …Stansberry’s application focused on the topic at the nexus of her education, professional work and heart: wildland fire.

OREGON — Three dozen environmental groups are calling on the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to cancel a timber sale on federal land near Medford where activists say centuries old trees are slated to be cut. Organizers from Pacific Northwest Forest Defense have been sitting in old-growth trees for a week and set up a camp blocking Boise Cascade from cutting up to 516 acres of trees within an area owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. …Activists are concerned that the bureau is allowing Boise Cascade and the other companies to cut old-growth and mature trees at the site… that are more than 180 years old and up to 400 years old. Lisa Tschampl, for Boise Cascade, said there are no 400-year old trees at the site and that the trees at least 150 years old have been marked not to be cut. She said the company is “thinning” the area selectively, not clearcutting it.

MISSOULA, Montana is in a forest health crisis. …And this is because of prior years of mismanagement and fire mitigation that has allowed large amounts of overgrowth, which in turn acts as fuel for wildfires. And with a complex system to manage the forest, the decline of the lumber industry has further complicated the situation. “We are dealing with a forest health and wildfire crisis. …Overtime our forests have become overgrown, more diseased, more fire prone, and we’re all familiar with the smoke we’re all breathing all summer from these catastrophic wildfires,” said Shawn Thomas, for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. …The timber sales that he oversees in large part come from mills including Pyramid Mountain and Roseburg Forest… whose upcoming closures are creating economic concerns. But besides the economic concerns, there is also the worry about how this will affect the forests health. 

A recent letter to the editor responding to a commentary objecting to timber sales in Snohomish County, promulgated outdated ideas about forest ecology that have been categorically disproven by scientists. The author states that there is no shortage of old growth forest. I suppose that is a matter of opinion, but according to the 1993 Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team report, historically 65 percent of westside Pacific Northwest forests were mature and old growth. In 2004, 70 percent of those westside forests were less than 80 years old. Furthermore, these calculations don’t account for the carbon emissions generated by the activities of road construction, logging, transporting the trees to mills, and milling of lumber. …Mature forests are next in line to become old growth, and are invaluable for this reason, but also provide essential ecosystem services in their present state.

In dense forests off I-5 in Josephine County, Oregon, up a few miles of winding dirt roads, a handful of tents, a hammock and an acoustic guitar mark the camp of those describing themselves as “forest defenders.” … The square of thick forest where activists have been camping for a week is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, part of the agency’s 11,000-acre Poor Windy project that includes areas slated for commercial timber harvest as well as forest thinning to prevent wildfires from getting out of control. At the top of one of these trees, a massive Ponderosa pine with a thin band of orange paint around its trunk, a big banner reads: “No Old Growth Logging in a Climate Crisis.” …A spokesperson with the BLM’s Medford office, meanwhile, said that old-growth logging isn’t the goal for these projects.

WASHINGTON — Members of a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee said at a hearing Wednesday they were focused on keeping pay for wildland firefighters at the higher level set in a 2021 law and urged Forest Service Chief Randy Moore to focus on ways to maintain a healthy timber industry. Senate Interior-Environment Subcommittee Chair Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, and ranking Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said they were committed to funding Forest Service programs to prevent wildfires and to maintain healthy forests. As the temporary additional funding to the agency appropriated in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and Democrats’ 2022 climate, taxes and policy law approaches an end, lawmakers and the agency must work on a way to continue strong funding for an agency that is on the front lines of a changing climate, Merkley said. “Those are one-time investments,” Merkley said of the additional spending passed in recent years. “And those funds are running out.”

Those who make that their livelihood, and others with a stake in Washington’s forests, are looking back at the successes and failures of 50 years of environmental protection and what lies ahead for the next five decades. …Grays Harbor College hosted the annual meeting of the Washington State Society of American Foresters April 3-5. Attended by about 130 people including state forest and wildlife managers, representatives from private timber companies and tribal natural resource managers, the meeting orbited around the anniversary of the important forest law. …Washington’s earliest forestry laws date back to 1946, when the state first started requiring the industry to replant harvested trees. …The collaborative approach to solving natural resource conflicts when it comes to logging practices continues today. But it’s not without ups and downs. Court Stanley, who has spent nearly 40 years in the wood products industry, likened the collaborative relationship to a marriage.

There is an even larger impact on our local economy beyond the significant loss of direct and indirect jobs from the impending closure of Pyramid Mountain Lumber. The mill directly affects the flow of revenue to our community’s education system and local infrastructure. State Trust lands are managed to return revenue to the school trust to fund our public school system. Forest products have been the backbone of state trust land revenue for generations. Without a mill to sell logs to, the state will not be able to generate revenue from managing forests. ….In the short term it will mean less money for public education. …Without mills, and a strong network of foresters and logging contractors this money is off the table. …There are two likely outcomes … either taxes will go up, or the funding available for education and road maintenance will go down.

A report by a team of 40 experts outlines a new approach to forest stewardship that “braids together” Indigenous knowledge and Western science to conserve and restore more resilient forestlands. The report provides foundational material to inform future work on climate-smart adaptive management practices for USDA Forest Service land managers. “Our forests are in grave danger in the face of climate change,” said Cristina Eisenberg, an associate dean of forestry at Oregon State University. “By braiding together Indigenous knowledge with Western science, we can view the problems with what is known as ‘Two-Eyed Seeing’ ”. Eisenberg co-led the report team with Susan Prichard, a fire ecologist at the University of Washington. …Other members of the core leadership team are Paul Hessburg, a senior research ecologist with the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, and Michael Paul Nelson, a professor and director of the Center for the Future of Forests and Society at OSU.

A proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to kill roughly half a million barred owls to protect the spotted owl has conservationists and animal welfare advocates debating the moral issue of killing one species to protect another. Dozens of wildlife protection and animal welfare organizations signed a letter opposing the November proposal. A group of 75 organizations urged Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to scrap what it calls a “reckless” plan. “Non-lethal management actions to protect spotted owls and their habitats should be made the priority action,” it read. But the USFWS says if no action is taken to cull the barred owl population, the northern spotted owl faces extinction. …To ensure the survival of the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, the service is proposing the mass removal of over 470,000 barred owls across California, Washington and Oregon over a three-decade span.

CALIFORNIA — Peak wildfire season in California is a few months away, and the wet weather could create more fuel to burn when that time comes. Despite rain and snow still in the forecast, firefighters are preparing now for wildfire season, and new changes are coming to the firefighting workforce. With fires growing in size and duration and the needs and costs for staffing, the U.S. Forest Service is pivoting to a new business model it says will offer more flexibility when responding to wildfires. “In order to keep that workforce going and to continue to feed the system of leadership throughout the workforce, we’re constantly bringing in new folks,” said Alex Robertson with the U.S. Forest Service. There’s been a growing strain on the wildland firefighting workforce as fires become larger and more involved. In past years, a shortage of top-level type 1 teams has resulted in type 2 teams taking on bigger assignments.

…In wildfires, safety depends on your co-workers. There’s luck and there’s the strength to resist stupidity, but often you rely on the experience level of the person beside you. The U.S. Forest Service is losing experience. Federal firefighters are quitting. Leadership is leaving. Recruitment is abysmal. The reason is simple: The government hasn’t significantly raised pay in decades. Thirty years ago, a fire job could afford you a modest home. The value proposition was fair — work a year’s worth of hours in one summer and come away with a year’s pay. But wages have barely gone up since then. …Lately, longer fire seasons subject firefighters to weeks of eight-hour days in spring and fall. No overtime, no hazard pay — missing family, and usually, still on call 24 hours a day. …As firefighters quit, it guts crews of experience, leadership and tradition. The firefighters who remain will be less safe. So will homes. [Full access to this story requires a Washington Post subscription]

Dusty Johnson resents the implication that he’s looking out for the timber industry at the expense of the Black Hills National Forest. “The idea that anyone in government wants to allow the timber industry to cut what they want to cut is absurd,” Johnson told South Dakota Searchlight. “I think it does a tremendous disrespect to this process.” Johnson, a Republican who is South Dakota’s lone U.S. representative, disliked a recent commentary written by retired U.S. Forest Service employee Dave Mertz and published by Searchlight. Mertz wrote the commentary in response to Johnson’s March 2 forestry roundtable discussion in Spearfish. “Repeatedly,” Mertz wrote, “panelists stated what the timber industry needs. Never was there any concern for what level of timber harvesting the forest needs.” …The researchers said wildfires and a mountain pine beetle epidemic drastically reduced the number of trees suitable for logging.

The Kootenai National Forest is conducting spring prescribed fire projects when weather, fuel conditions and air quality become favorable. Each project follows a prescribed fire burn plan. The prescribed fire projects are located and designed to be controlled to reduce the potential for adverse effects. Robust scientific data shows that strategically placed prescribed fire and mechanical treatments are vital to reducing forest fuels, lowering catastrophic wildfire risks and slowing or stopping the progression of wildfires. These projects will comply with Montana air quality standards and guided by the Montana/Idaho State Airshed Group to reduce the impacts of smoke to our neighbors, cooperators and surrounding communities.  Land and fire managers may opt to cease firing operations early, on the day of ignitions, for smoke dispersal or other factors.

SEATTLE – State and federal agencies and departments in Oregon and Washington have agreed to collaborate on addressing the escalating wildfire crisis by increasing use of prescribed fire and other forest fuel management strategies at larger geographic scales while also increasing outreach to nearby communities as these strategies are deployed. These strategies reduce forest fuels on the ground and allow for strategic burning that minimizes community and public health impacts relative to impacts from uncontrolled wildfires. “One of the best tools we have for making our forests more resilient against catastrophic wildfires is controlled burning,” said EPA Region 10 Administrator Casey Sixkiller. “The agreement will help to ensure federal and state agencies are working together using the best science to identify where and when prescribed fires will occur, bringing local communities into the conversation, and providing resources to residents to prepare for smoke and have access to clean indoor air.”