Region Archives: US West

President Donald Trump signed executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in Alaska. While state political leaders cheer, environmental groups see it as worrying. …”It means a timber industry in the Tongass National Forest can once again take place. It means Alaska can begin the process [of] finally getting its remain[ing] acreage of land from the federal government”, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy said on X about the executive orders. …It also aims to reverse restrictions on logging and road-building in a temperate rainforest. …Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that the president “just can’t wave a magic wand and make these things happen. Environmental laws and rules must be followed… We’re ready and looking forward to the fight of our lives to keep Alaska great, wild and abundant”.

For the second time this decade, Weyerhaeuser Co.’s Longview lumber mill has been hit with a serious state fine for violating state stormwater control regulations. On Monday, the state Department of Ecology announced it has fined the company $145,000 for 36 stormwater discharge violations, 15 monitoring requirements violations, and 16 reporting requirement violations, all of which occurred between July 2022 and May 2024… “We believe strongly in permit compliance and invest significant time and resources to ensure we are meeting all environmental standards,” Weyerhaeuser Co. spokeswoman Mary Catherine McAleer said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. The latest penalty follows another related to stormwater that Ecology issued to Weyerhaeuser‘s Longview lumber mill in 2022, when the agency fined the facility $40,000 for repeated water quality violations.

Oregon is grappling with the aftermath of a record-breaking wildfire season that has left the state facing a staggering $218 million bill. The unprecedented costs have ignited a fierce debate among lawmakers over who should foot the bill and how to prevent future financial crises. The state’s current funding model for wildfire response has come under intense scrutiny. Private landowners contribute to a fund that is capped at ten million, while the state’s general fund covers the remaining costs. This year, however, the general fund will bear the brunt of the expenses, paying more than fourteen times the amount contributed by private landowners. Representative Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, has long been a critic of the state’s reliance on the general fund for wildfire costs. He argues that large-forest landowners should be held responsible for the fires on their land.

A sweeping executive order signed by President Donald Trump during the first hours of his second term aims to boost Alaska’s natural resource industry by reversing environmental protections that limit oil and gas extraction, logging, and other development projects across the state. The order was one of dozens signed by Trump following his inauguration Monday.  Trump’s broad order, titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” follows a request from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy for swift action reforming the federal government offices and policies that oversee Alaska’s resource development industry. The policy changes were also championed by Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation. …“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said in his second inaugural address. One of his executive orders signed Monday established a “national energy emergency.”

…LA, and much of the United States, was asking how wildfires could rage out of control in one of the richest cities in the world – a city with a long history of dealing with fire. What could have, what should have, been done? And who was to blame? …“There is an element of human hubris in this to think we can have full control,” Dr. Edith de Guzman, a cooperative extension specialist in adaptation policy who has closely studied impacts from the climate crisis on communities, said. “Nobody would blame officials for not stopping a hurricane – when a hurricane comes, it comes.” …What hit LA last week was a perfect storm – a combination of extreme weather, a warming climate, human hubris and and safety measures that have been delayed or disregarded for decades. …Firefighters faced an enormous task, both Safford and de Guzman said. And the homes they were defending were built in absolutely untenable places.

UTAH — The investigation into the Uinta blaze found it started a day earlier than initially thought. The amount is the maximum fine allowed under the timber harvesting contract loggers held with the U.S. Forest Service, according to an agency investigative report obtained through a public records request by KPCW. The Yellow Lake Fire consumed more than 33,000 acres in the Uinta Mountains. It was at one point the highest priority fire in the United States with 889 firefighters responding at its peak. The forest service’s investigation did not include the total cost of fighting the fire, and it redacted the name of the logging company responsible.

The Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC) reports on January 16, House Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR-04) and Representative Scott Peters (D-CA-50) announced the reintroduction of the Fix Our Forests Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at strengthening resiliency through active forest management. Chairman Westerman noted that the recent LA wildfires underscore the urgency of this issue and said that the bill is slated for House floor consideration next week. The bill would expedite environmental reviews to help prevent catastrophic fires and increase the scope of restoration projects. The legislation also seeks to deter lawsuits that delay that which is deemed essential forest management. Additionally, the reintroduced bill includes language from California Democrat Representative Josh Harder that would require federal agencies to establish standard operating procedures relating to payment timelines for fire suppression cost-share agreements.

Additional coverage from the Federation of American Scientists: Position On The Re-Introduction Of H.R. 471 – The Fix Our Forests Act

As California residents grapple for answers in the wake of a massive firestorm event in which two major blazes ravaged parts of Los Angeles — the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire —power lines are once again at the center of debate. It’s no wonder. Failed electric equipment and poor maintenance have caused horrific blazes in recent years, sometimes sparked by the smallest of parts, according to government investigators. …The 2023 fire in Maui that killed 102 people was caused by “reenergization” of broken power lines during high winds that showered sparks into dense, dry vegetation. …One key but often unpopular tool for preventing deadly wildfires is shutting off power when high winds of certain velocities are forecast. …Undergrounding power lines is the single best method to avoid dangerous arcing of overhead wires, or having dry palm frond hit one that can spark or spread fires. It’s also by far the most costly

On Dec. 20, 2024, new research was published that reveals scientists discovered more than 30 dead whitebark pine trees that were entombed in ice for millennia on the Beartooth Plateau in northwest Wyoming. The groundbreaking discovery was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and can be found here. According to the research, the whitebark pines were lying down with “extraordinary quality of wood preservation.” The authors of the peer-reviewed paper write that recent warming has decreased snow and ice cover of most subalpine treelines around the world, so that the whitebark pine trees have become visible after up to 5,900 years. This discovery provides insights into past climate change and ecosystem dynamics in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).

On his first day in office, Dave Upthegrove, the state’s new public lands commissioner, said he would pause logging sales in some older state-managed forests for about six months. In doing so, he’s taking a step toward fulfilling a campaign promise to set aside nearly 80,000 acres of older, but not necessarily old-growth, trees. How much acreage the pause would cover was not immediately clear, but a Department of Natural Resources spokesperson said Wednesday it would involve slightly more than 20 timber sales… The state’s previous lands commissioner, Hilary Franz, during an interview last fall, pointed to hundreds of thousands of acres the department has already set aside for conservation and highlighted the environmental benefits of using wood from trees grown in-state, rather than importing it from other places that might have less stringent logging regulations.

Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska would seem as temperate as coastal Washington is now. Glaciers would retreat, fires may become common, and new wildlife would arrive. How would long-lived, stationary organisms like trees cope with these shifts? Scientists try to answer that question in a number of ways. Most of them have logistical drawbacks, like the high maintenance costs for lengthy experiments… results show that when faced with large temperature swings, forests stayed unexpectedly stable. This suggests that vegetation replacement, forest dieback, or changes in tree composition are less likely to occur in response to radical climate change than most land managers might predict… About 27 percent of Glacier Bay National Park is covered by more than 1,000 glaciers. Many of these are alongside old-growth, temperate rainforests. This type of rainforest also clings to the damp, coastal mountains of Canada, Chile, and New Zealand. It’s considered critical for global diversity and carbon storage.

Last year, wildfires burned 1.9 million acres in Oregon, setting a new record. Since 2020, major river drainages of the Cascades, including the McKenzie, Santiam, and Clackamas rivers, have been devastated by fires. Many fear that it could be a matter of time before a catastrophic wildfire burns along the Highway 26 corridor on the west slope of Mount Hood. Bracing for this potential, a small nonprofit organization based in Sandy, Oregon, is cutting trees and clearing brush. Launched with funding from state and federal sources, AntFarm’s Community Wildfire Defense Program aims to address the growing threat of wildfires in rural Oregon communities, especially on Mount Hood, where the pockets of neighborhoods and businesses are hemmed along the edge of the 1.1 million acre Mt. Hood National Forest. The program helps at-risk communities along the Highway 26 corridor create plans for wildfire defense, offers fire-risk assessments to property owners, and performs “boots on the ground” mitigation, such as fuel reduction.

The Tongass National Forest’s annual Anan Bear Awards showcased the now viral black and brown bears’ range of talents from a brown bear’s expert fishing skills winning “Fishing in Style,” to a black bear’s lack thereof being awarded “Slippery Paws.” One of the four-legged influencers, a cub that was not quite ready to claim expert hunting abilities, received 2.1 million views after winning the “Nope” award! The idea for the Anan Bear Awards originated on a whiteboard in 2022, after staff at the observatory were inspired by the National Park Service’s Fat Bear Week. Enter Forest Service Forestry Technician Jennifer Kardiak, who wanted to celebrate all aspects of the Anan bears, not just their figures.

The Nez Perce Clearwater National Forest has published a multi-decade forest plan that favors logging and motorized and mechanized recreation. Last week, the acting Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest supervisor, Heath Perrine, signed off on a final version of the forest plan that will guide projects on the national forest for at least the next 20 years. The previous forest plans for the Nez Perce and Clearwater Forests were separately written in the late-1980s. After decades went by and the two forests were combined in 2013 due to budget cuts … a new management plan was needed for a forest that now covers 4 million acres and seven counties in Idaho. However, the process the Nez Perce-Clearwater Forest used to produce the plan has been somewhat unorthodox, from having an acting supervisor, who was in the job for six months, make the decision to choose an alternative that wasn’t originally defined in the draft environmental study. 

WASHINGTON — a first wave of bills has been put forward by Republicans and Democrats alike in response to the devastation in Los Angeles. The measures come as President Biden has pledged 100% federal backing for disaster assistance for the next six months, though with President-elect Donald Trump taking office in less than a week, the future of the funding is not completely secured. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), meanwhile, has said … he is discussing  whether to link aid to the deeply political debate over increasing the debt ceiling. 

• The Fix Our Forests Act would streamline environmental regulations to make forest management happen faster
• Rep. Darrell Issa introduced legislation he called Direct Hire to Fight Fire
• The Preventing Our Next Natural Disaster Act calls for changes to how FEMA prepares for disasters
• Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) plans to introduce legislation to rein in California’s Coastal Commission. 

 MONTANA — The recent collapse of western Montana’s timber industry did more than eliminate jobs, it also left Missoula County and various management agencies with one less tool to manage area forests. But county commissioners on Monday joined officials with the Bureau of Land Management and the Blackfoot Challenge to explore ways to revitalize the region’s timber industry. If the industry is going to reemerge, it will need to do so under a new model, they said. “There’s an acknowledgment that industry is a partner when you look at the millions of acres of federal land, as well as the private forested land and state land,” said Erin Carey, with the BLM. “When you look at the restoration needs across millions of acres in western Montana, we cannot accomplish those restoration outcomes without industry.” ….Forest restoration could be an industry in itself, along with the creation of new products like cross-laminated timber.

While authorities still don’t know what sparked the deadly fires in the Los Angeles area, they do know one clear way the flames have spread: embers. …The flames have been fueled by strong winds, which not only aid combustion by increasing the oxygen supply but carry embers to unburned areas. Contrary to popular belief, experts say most homes destroyed by wildfires aren’t overcome by a racing wall of flames, but rather burn after being ignited by airborne embers. Here’s a look at what embers are and the role they play in wildfires. …the embers involved in wildfires are drastically different from campfires, said Anne Cope, chief engineer at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. “Those embers can travel for miles, and it’s often the neighborhoods that are closer to the wildlands that get inundated with just loads and loads — just showered with embers,” she said.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego, University of Florida and Arizona State University have been awarded $3.28 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation to build OpenForest4D – a web-based cyberinfrastructure platform for next-generation 4D forest mapping and monitoring. The project’s goal is to advance the mapping and monitoring of global forest ecosystems by fusing the most up-to-date, multi-source remote sensing data and novel artificial intelligence models to generate research-grade estimates of forest structure and above-ground biomass across a range of timescales. …Previously these sorts of calculations were limited to research professionals with advanced expertise. By providing these cyberinfrastructure services via an easily accessible and user-friendly science gateway, users of all expertise levels can now access advanced forestry analysis tools regardless of their technical skill level, democratizing scientific computing and enabling on-demand generation of forestry-related products. 

CALIFORNIA, USA — Firefighters in Los Angeles, are fighting misinformation as people claim these fires could have been prevented with forest management. However, experts say there’s much more to minimizing fire risks than just prescribed burns. In an effort to curb wildfires, California aims to treat a million acres of land in the state each year. …ABC10 asked if anything could have been done to prevent the spread of the Southern California fires. “There’s nothing. The conditions that we saw in Southern California last Tuesday were in above the 99.99th percentile of severity,” Adrienne Freeman, with USFS said. …”Even a large scale fire break probably wouldn’t have been effective in keeping the wildfire out of the communities. And once the communities are burning, the spread is from home to home, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with the forest management,” said Chris Field, with Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.

The resignation of Oregon’s top forestry executive last week comes at a pivotal moment for environmental policies in the state. Lawmakers are a week away from convening a legislative session that’s expected to tackle Oregon’s critical wildfire funding issues. And forestry officials are scrambling to finalize two major overhauls to endangered species protections on public and private lands… The state forester has long been a highly political role, juggling policy input from Oregon’s robust timber industry, timber-dependent counties and environmental advocates. “There’s nothing about the job that is easy,” said Board of Forestry chair Jim Kelly… But for many, state forester Cal Mukumoto’s resignation didn’t come as a surprise, even for Mukumoto himself. “Without the confidence of the Legislature and the governor’s office, I think it didn’t leave me many options but to resign,” Mukumoto said.

Firefighters battling the deadly wildfires that raced through the Los Angeles area in January 2025 have been hampered by a limited supply of freshwater. So, when the winds are calm enough, skilled pilots flying planes aptly named Super Scoopers are skimming off 1,500 gallons of seawater at a time and dumping it with high precision on the fires. Using seawater to fight fires can sound like a simple solution – but seawater also has downsides… A novel experiment called TEMPEST was designed to understand how and why historically salt-free coastal forests react to their first exposures to salty water… Our research group is still trying to understand all the factors that limit the forest’s tolerance to salty water, and how our results apply to other ecosystems such as those in the Los Angeles area. Tree leaves turning from green to brown well before fall was a surprise, but there were other surprises hidden in the soil below our feet.

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) recently reached a milestone of protecting more than 200,000 acres of private forests threatened by development through the U.S. Forest Service Forest Legacy Program. Over the last year, DNR almost doubled the acres conserved since 1993 when DNR began participating. Washington secured $99,335,000 in funding from the U.S. Forest Service through the Inflation Reduction Act in 2024. “Washington has continued to be a leader in securing funding from the Forest Legacy program, protecting thousands of acres of privately owned forests that could have easily been turned into strip malls and housing developments,” said Hilary Franz, Commissioner of Public Lands for Washington State. “With increasing population growth putting pressure on our forestlands, this program is critical to helping private landowners keep their lands in forestry, ensuring local jobs and wood products, providing public access and recreation, and protecting environmental benefits from clean air and water to critical fish and wildlife habitat.”

Four Oregon lawmakers are calling on Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to help stop a plan that would kill 450,000 barred owls in an effort to save endangered spotted owls over the next 30 years. …In a letter sent Tuesday, state Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Stayton, Rep. David Gomberg, D-Lincoln County, Rep. Virgle Osborne, R-Roseburg, and Sen.-elect Bruce Starr, R-Yamhill and Polk counties, asked the incoming Trump administration officials to stop the reportedly more than $1 billion project, calling it a “budget buster” and “impractical.” …Here is why the Oregon lawmakers are opposed to the plan, what the plan would do and why it is controversial. …“As wildlife professionals, we approached this issue carefully and did not come to this decision lightly,” USFWS Oregon State Supervisor Kessina Lee said in announcing the decision in August.

IDAHO – The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest said it will finalize and release the long-awaited revision of its governing plan Friday. For more than two decades, Forest Service employees have been working on updating the document known as a forest plan. It was written in 1987 and designed to last about 15 years. Over that time the agency has started, scrapped and restarted the effort several times, often based on shifting federal rules governing the process. A final draft of the plan was released in the fall of 2023. While the finalized plan won’t be available until Friday, it is not expected to be dramatically different from the draft. …Conservation groups panned the draft plan because it dramatically reduced streams and rivers that would be recommended for protection under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers act from more than 80 to just 11.

The Biden administration appears to be doubling down on a plan to kill barred owls in order to protect the northern spotted owl populations in Northwest forests. But a group of bipartisan Oregon legislators… are calling on the incoming Trump administration’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency to reverse the decision. Two years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a plan to shoot and kill an estimated 400,000 invasive barred owls at a cost of roughly $1.35 billion over the next three decades. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management said it’s signing on to that plan, too. …“This simply isn’t a sound strategy — fiscally or ecologically,” Oregon state Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, said. …Gomberg joined four Republican Oregon lawmakers on Wednesday to issue a bipartisan call to the next president. They asked Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to nix plans for culling barred owls in Northwest forests.

As wildfires continue to burn out of control across Los Angeles, questions have turned to why and how California authorities allowed the perfect conditions — extremely dry, uncleared forests, hillsides and brush — to proliferate during an already dangerous fire season made worse by a Santa Ana wind event that hits the area with relative frequency. Well before those dangerous conditions sparked the massive blazes… this week, the region was already a tinderbox due, in part, to a lack of prescribed fires. …The reason California hasn’t conducted more controlled burnings comes down to existing environmental laws in the U.S. that have posed bureaucratic obstacles to prescribed fires. It often takes years for proposals to go through reviews before any controlled burning can take place. …Lawmakers have introduced legislation that would allow for more controlled burning, but because no laws have been passed, environmental red tape has continued to present challenges to proactive fire management.

LOS ANGELES – Following President Biden’s afternoon briefing regarding the unprecedented Los Angeles fires, Governor Gavin Newsom thanked the Biden-Harris Administration for its swift support for the state that is boosting response efforts and protecting thousands of Californians. The Governor met today (January 9) with Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell in Los Angeles. Yesterday in Santa Monica, Governor Newsom and President Biden were briefed by local and state emergency officials on the Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst fires. Shortly after, President Biden approved Governor Newsom’s request for a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration to support ongoing response efforts related to the major wildfires. Today, at the Governor’s request for more federal assistance, the President authorized increasing federal assistance to cover 100% of California’s fire management and debris removal costs for 180 days, up from the traditional 75%. This declaration makes available federal funding to help state, tribal and local governments cover emergency response costs.

Foresters across the country are asking private landowners for help saving white oak trees, and Missourians have eagerly answered the call. More than 40 people recently signed up to help the University of Missouri Extension and the state Department of Conservation plant and raise white oak tree seedlings. The project is a part of the White Oak Initiative, a more than 15 state effort that aims to make forests more suitable for the trees. Brian Schweiss, a sustainable forestry specialist with MU Extension, said the white oak is a critical component of the forest ecosystem and supports wildlife. However, young trees are struggling. “We have a lot of mature white oak, but we don’t have a lot of young trees that are coming up, replacing the mature trees that are harvested or died.”

PORT ANGELES — The committee of commissioners representing five encumbered counties, including Clallam and Jefferson, have arrived at a recommendation for how timber revenue from replacement lands should be distributed between the counties. The ratio agreed upon by the committee, known as the impact share method, will distribute funds based on how many encumbered acres each county has when compared to the total number of acres encumbered between the five counties. The Washington State Association of Counties (WSAC) will vote on the recommendation at its Feb. 5 meeting, Clallam County Commissioner Mark Ozias said. Encumbered counties are those which have substantial portions of their state trust land set aside for protection of endangered species such as marbled murrelets and northern spotted owls.

Firefighters last week began setting backfires to contain the Horton Fire, which continues to burn in unseasonally warm, dry conditions on the face of the Mogollon Rim. The Forest Service resorted to backfires due to rough, overgrown conditions that make it too dangerous for firefighters to engage the fire directly. That frightens many homeowners. …The controlled burns being used to tame the 1,100-acre Horton Fire are not managed fires – since they represent the only safe strategy to stop the human-caused blaze. …Numerous studies have proven that the Forest Service will have to substantially increase the use of managed fires to restore forest health and protect forested communities. …The key problem lies in the increase in tree densities across millions of acres of Arizona ponderosa pine forests in the past century. …The problem has been compounded by approval of homes and subdivisions in that now endangered Wildland-Urban Interface.

Forecasters warned Southern California could see a “life-threatening, destructive” windstorm this week, as powerful gusts and dropped humidity levels raise the risk for wildfires in parched areas still recovering from a recent destructive blaze. Gusts could reach 80 mph (129 kph) across much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties as winds intensify Tuesday into Wednesday. Isolated gusts could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills. “Scattered downed trees and power outages are likely, in addition to rapid fire growth and extreme behavior with any fire starts,” the weather service office for Los Angeles said. The weather service warned of downed trees, knocked over big rigs and motorhomes, dangerous conditions off the coasts of LA and Orange County, and potential delays at local airports. Areas where gusts blowing across tinder-dry vegetation could create “extreme fire conditions” include the charred footprint of last month’s wind-drivenFranklin Fire, which damaged or destroyed 48 structures in Malibu.

Oregon homeowners who live in certain high-risk wildfire areas defined by the state must now meet new building codes and reduce vegetation around their homes under new “wildfire hazard maps” unveiled Tuesday. The release of the maps follows a record-breaking wildfire season last year and firestorms in 2020 that killed nine people and destroyed thousands of homes. The state-developed maps — which will not affect homeowners’ insurance rates, under Oregon law — create new rules for those living in the most fire-prone areas that also border wildlands such as forests or grasslands. The provisions impact 6% of the state’s roughly 1.9 million tax lots, a reduction from an earlier version developed in 2022 but retracted after homeowners raised concerns that it would increase insurance premiums. …In Oregon, the new building and so-called defensible space codes will affect only about 106,000 tax lots. But experts say that’s an important step in identifying and protecting fire-prone areas.

The Oregon Department of Forestry Tuesday released final versions of statewide wildfire hazard and wildland-urban interface maps developed by Oregon State University scientists. …The wildfire hazard map was mandated by Senate Bill 762, a $195 million legislative package in 2021 aimed at improving Oregon’s wildfire preparedness through fire-adapted communities, safe and effective response to fire, and increasing the resilience of the state’s landscapes. The hazard map is designed to support property owners with information about potential wildfire hazards in the landscapes where they live. It also provides state agencies with guidance as to where actions can be taken to reduce the danger wildfire poses to people, homes and property. …By law, the maps cannot be used by insurers to adjust rates. Oregon’s Division of Financial Regulation oversees the insurance industry in the state.

Related coverage in KTVZ.com: New Maps Show Wildfire Risk in Your Area

On January 6th, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection announced the receipt of $5 million to support the California Forest Improvement Program. This funding is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inflation Reduction Act funding, aimed at strengthening financial incentives for private forest landowners to manage their forests sustainably and to permanently conserve private forests in partnership with states. CalFire’s program will provide technical assistance and direct cost-share payments to support the implementation of forest resilience and climate mitigation practices across 2,458 acres of private nonindustrial forest land with this additional funding. United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack emphasized the importance of forests, noting that private forestlands make up more than half of all forests in the U.S. He stated that the Inflation Reduction Act is helping provide the necessary resources for private forest landowners to maintain working forests for future generations to enjoy their benefits.

In 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order calling for the protection of the last mature and old-growth forests on federal lands, but the Trump administration poses an existential threat to what’s left of these ancient trees… Last year the Oregon Board of Forestry, which oversees state forest management, approved proceeding with a habitat conservation plan that will make roughly 45% of our state forests off limits to most logging. Unfortunately, roughly 9,500 acres of mature and old-growth forest, nearly one-quarter of what remains, have been left out of these conservation areas and will be clear-cut. This is where Kotek’s leadership is badly needed. She can provide a ray of hope in light of Trump’s vow to let timber and other extractive industries plunder our federal public lands.

Resource managers tasked with managing the Flathead River’s three forks under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act announced they’re rebooting a public-engagement process despite falling short of a goal to have completed the draft plan and environmental assessment months ago. The Flathead National Forest published its “proposed action” document for public review on the agency’s project website... The document lays out several recommendations to mitigate direct human impacts to natural resources, including prohibiting motor-vehicle camping or parking on gravel bars; requiring solid human waste containment within 200 feet of the river’s edge; and requiring a metal fire pan or fire blanket for campfires above and below the high-water mark within the Wild and Scenic River corridor on the North and Middle forks… The last management plan was adopted in 1980.