Region Archives: US West

Assembly Republicans announced a series of bills to address and improve California’s wildfire prevention, response and recovery efforts. The Republican proposals will streamline badly needed wildfire prevention projects, encourage residents to harden their homes against fire, hold people accountable for arson, looting or flying drones near fires, and help communities and homeowners recover from disasters. Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher … highlighted the urgent need to remove the fuels that drive catastrophic wildfires. … “California hasn’t done nearly enough to remove flammable vegetation and prevent devastating wildfires – if you don’t believe the science, believe your own damn eyes,” Gallagher said. … Republicans’ policies are focused on three areas: preventing devastating wildfires through fuels reduction projects and home hardening, improving disaster response by cracking down on looting and irresponsible drone use, and helping communities recover by supporting local nonprofits and making it easier to rebuild.

The catastrophe of wildfire is creating interesting politics in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, former mayor of San Francisco, America’s liberal center, has waived environmental reviews and permitting requirements to allow Los Angeles wildfire victims to rebuild their homes with less oversight and regulation. …It’s remarkable that Newsom put the Coastal Commission in a choke hold. Over-regulation is the charge Republicans have leveled at the commission for years. …Given Republican Donald Trump’s win, are Democrats adjusting their politics to meet the moment? Are environmental rules that have guided development for over half century still relevant when wildfires burn whole communities and forests? …How the stress of wildfires changes the way we consider environmental regulations will be something to watch in the coming years. Trump wants make such rules go away. That’s not right. But giving a blanket waiver as Newsom has done may not work well, either.

Federal officials and an environmental group have settled a lawsuit over a Kettle Range timber project’s potential impacts on Canada lynx. The Kettle Range Conservation Group and the Colville National Forest finalized an agreement last week that ends a lawsuit over the Bulldog Project, a combination of logging and prescribed burning the agency had planned on about 13,600 acres in the Kettle Range and a nearby area known as the Wedge. The Kettle Range Conservation Group sued over the project in 2023, arguing that it would damage important habitat for lynx, which have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 2000. The suit raised concerns with a 2020 update to the agency’s lynx analysis units, which shrank the area protected as habitat for the snow-loving big cats. In the settlement agreement filed last week, the Forest Service agreed to return to its previous lynx unit boundaries and to not authorize timber work within the units, both old and new.

In 2021, a nonprofit formed to answer county executive Satpal Sidhu’s call to plant one-million trees in Whatcom. The organization, Whatcom Million Trees Project (WMTP), has now planted over 2,800 trees and protected nearly 323,000. The mission is to plant and protect mature trees, while also connecting people to nature and spreading the understanding of why trees and forests are so important to our region. The planting and protecting takes place in community parks and neighborhoods, as well rural lands in more remote parts of the county. Though the group clarifies that young saplings won’t add notable climate or biodiversity benefits for years, they hope to spread hope though the communal planting of trees.

Clemson University has named Wayne Phillips, a forester with 28 years of experience across all aspects of the forestry supply chain, as the new manager of the Clemson Experimental Forest. Phillips takes over management of the forest after eight years as area marketing manager with Weyerhaeuser, a timber, land and forest products company that owns or manages 28 million acres of forestland. Phillips is the seventh manager of the 18,000-acre forest since Clemson College began supervising the land in 1939 under an agreement with the federal government. Over nearly 100 years, careful management has transformed the land from depleted row crop farmland to a resource for teaching, research and outreach, as well as a valued community asset.

The Fix Our Forests Act, co-sponsored by a Republican receiving substantial donations from the logging industry, makes it easier to bypass environmental review on federal lands. It would allow loggers to more easily thin forests by reducing environmental regulations and public input. The thinking is that reducing tree counts means reducing wildfire fuel. However, the most dangerous fires—the ones that threaten densely populated areas—rarely begin deep in the woods. For example, the Los Angeles firestorms “originated in very brushy areas just outside of town, then became an urban configuration issue,” said Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, or FUSEE. “No amount of logging would have saved anything—it’s this spurious connection.”

Related content from UtilityDrive: PG&E, other electric utilities call for Senate to pass forest management bill

In the first two days of his new term, President Donald Trump signed more than 200 executive orders. One was aimed at accessing more natural resources in Alaska. It attempts to roll back protections on over 9 million acres of Tongass National Forest, potentially opening them up for logging… The Juneau-based Southeast Alaska Conservation Council has been fighting to keep most of the Tongass roadless for decades. Council Director Maggie Rabb said it’s hard to predict what this administration will do next… Rabb said that the conservation council is not anti-logging. There is still active logging in the Tongass. For Rabb, the Roadless Rule has been an effective tool to protect old growth without actually ending logging. “The push to roll back the Roadless Rule has very little to do with on-the-ground realities in Southeast Alaska or market demand, and it’s very much about external agendas that are disconnected from our region,” she said.

PAYSON — When lightning ignited chaparral and ponderosa pine litter to form the West Fire in late August, U.S. Forest Service fire managers knew they had some room to let it run. Flames would creep along the brush and undergrowth some 13 miles northeast of Payson, burning around natural firebreaks in the rocks just below the rim. Once the fire crested the rim, having covered some 15,000 acres, it would die against a broader firebreak that Salt River Project (SRP) contractors had chewed out of the dense ponderosa forest with the intention of saving critical Arizona watersheds from just such a fire. …“The intended result is to reduce hazardous fuels, improve watershed conditions and wildlife habitat,” the Forest Service’s incident commander said. …The main reason for thinning, though, is to restore balance and, ultimately, fire itself to a landscape that had grown too thick to burn at less than catastrophic intensity. 

PORTLAND, Ore. – The United States Forest Service (USFS) is currently taking comments on its proposed changes to the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) through March 17. The NWFP dates back to the mid-1990s, serving as the blueprint for conserving forests and wildlife habitat along the West Coast. It covers over 24 million acres managed by the Forest Service and other federally managed lands, spanning from California and up through Washington. The proposed amendments intend to provide an updated management framework that incorporates best available scientific information and current conditions in order to better address the social, economic, and ecological changes experienced over the last 30 years. The proposed changes outlined in a Draft Environmental Impact Statement focus on themes of fire resilience, economic benefits, and forest stewardship, with Tribal inclusion and adapting to changing conditions interwoven throughout these themes.

In a brown dirt field, wet from irrigation and washed in early morning sunshine, a curious metal contraption moves like a mini tractor. As large as a love seat, and set on caterpillar tracks, the machine hums and zaps as it rolls at a snail’s pace over rows of small pines at the U.S. Forest Service tree nursery in Coeur d’Alene. “This machine can potentially save us a half million dollars annually in manual labor costs across our six nurseries,” said retired Forest Service Senior Research Scientist Kas Dumroese, M.S.’86, Ph.D. ’96. The machine, a weeding robot developed by this year’s University of Idaho robotics team, is designed to kill weeds in the nursery’s seedling beds. The team is comprised of graduate and undergraduate students and is based at the North Idaho College campus in Coeur d’Alene.

Since the 1970s, billions of dollars in federal contracts have gone to forestry work like replanting trees or fuels reduction. Oregon has long been a center for businesses getting those contracts. But that industry looked a lot different 50 years ago. On a December morning the hills above Ashland, like many forests in the West, are buzzing with the sound of chainsaws. Workers with the nonprofit Lomakatsi Restoration Project are busy working to protect the valley from wildfire. Crews are clearing understory, reducing fuel that can feed fire. But while Oregon has long been a center for these jobs, the industry has changed dramatically over time. …Thanks to the 1972 Oregon Forest Practices Act, Rust found that alternative. The law required land clear cut by loggers to be replanted, a win for early environmentalists. 

…This week, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act to help overcome the legal and political hurdles that stand in the way of addressing the wildfire crisis. …the declining health of our nation’s forests is the primary cause [of the wildfire crisis]. …Red tape and unnecessary litigation hold up forest restoration projects for years, consuming time and money that should instead be spent on the ground. Research from the Property and Environment Research Center—found that federal permitting and litigation can delay needed projects from five to nine years. …Co-sponsored by Rep. Scott Peters and Rep. Bruce Westerman, the legislation received broad bipartisan support. The Senate and President Donald Trump should move quickly to pass the legislation and empower agencies and partners with needed forest restoration tools.

Five Northwest conservation groups have joined the federal government in defending a program to kill barred owls in the Pacific Northwest to protect the threatened northern spotted owl. These environmental groups have joined the government’s side, in opposition to animal rights groups. Tom Wheeler of Arcata, a California-based conservation nonprofit EPIC, said that like animal rights groups, they also believe that individual lives of wild animals are precious, but, “We also hold that ecosystems are real and important and that species are real and important. And that the preservation of ecosystems and species are really important and worth protecting.” …Wheeler said it’s necessary to remove invasive barred owls from the region to give researchers more time to come up with a long-term solution to the growing threat of extinction for northern spotted owls. …The animals rights groups say the government is violating federal environmental law.

Bruce Westerman

WASHINGTON — One of the first bills to pass the lower chamber of Congress in Donald Trump’s presidency, the Fix Our Forests Act would increase the pace and scale of forest management projects by speeding up environmental reviews, deterring frivolous lawsuits. It was reintroduced after passing the House of Representatives last September with overwhelming bipartisan support but did not make it through the Senate, and will need to compete for floor space in the upper chamber before it can be signed into law. It passed the House comfortably in a 279-141 vote but environmental groups said the bill had been “misleadingly” named and would open public lands to massive logging projects under the guise of preventing wildfires. …Robert Dewey, at Defenders of Wildlife said the bill would remove science from land management decisions and weaken protections for endangered species. 

NAHB Press Release: NAHB Commends House Passage of Forestry Bill

The Hill, by Rachel Frazin: Amid raging fires, House passes contentious forestry bill

COLORADO — To create a society in balance with fire, we need to be able to imagine it. Unfortunately, for the last century, we’ve been saturated with news and stories about the worst aspects of fire. We need new stories about fire, stories that depict us as more than helpless victims or warriors against it. We need to see ourselves as stewards of the land so that we can coexist with fire. For the last four years, I poured my heart and soul into telling a story that demonstrates this. In 2020, the Cameron Peak Fire was racing uncontrollably towards communities in northern Colorado. When it reached the footprints of a prescribed burn and forest thinning treatment, a near miracle occurred. When I heard what happened, I knew that it needed to be shared far and wide. After four years of filming and editing, that film, Fireforest, is now freely available online.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been cleaning up the state’s forests since President Donald Trump told him to the last time he visited a big California wildfire in 2020. But as Trump touches down in Los Angeles on Friday to view the latest damage, forest management remains a political vulnerability for Newsom that Republicans have capitalized on since the wildfires started — and that Democrats have struggled to defend against. Trump’s repeated chastisements of Newsom to “manage your forests” echoes in-state Republicans’ longstanding argument that Newsom and Democrats aren’t doing enough to clear overgrown flammable brush and trees from the state’s forests. Some Republicans have taken up Trump’s idea of holding disaster aid hostage for policy concessions… Trump himself has repeated the familiar cudgel, telling Fox News, “Remember, I took criticism when I said, ‘You have to manage your forests.’ … Look at what happened in Los Angeles. It’s like a nuclear weapon went off.”

In the Wasatch Mountains of the western US on the slopes above a spring-fed lake, there dwells a single giant organism that provides an entire ecosystem on which plants and animals have relied for thousands of years. Found in my home state of Utah, “Pando” is a 106-acre stand of quaking aspen clones. Although it looks like a woodland of individual trees with striking white bark and small leaves that flutter in the slightest breeze, Pando (Latin for “I spread”) is actually 47,000 genetically identical stems that arise from an interconnected root network. This single genetic individual weighs around 6,000 metric tons. By mass, it is the largest single organism on Earth. Although Pando is protected by the US National Forest Service and is not in danger of being cut down, it is in danger of disappearing due to several other factors.

The Northwest Forest Plan is undergoing a once-in-a-generation amendment process and a symposium held on Wednesday afternoon on the University of Oregon campus worked to make sure that vital voices are included in the process. The symposium brought together multiple groups to make sure that the voices of indigenous communities, environmental justice advocates, and others are included in the forest plan’s amendment process. The goal is to educate the community about the critical importance of including indigenous perspectives and indigenous leadership in solving the climate and wildfire crisis affecting northwest forests… Nearly 280 people attended the symposium that was held in the Redwood Auditorium at the Erb Memorial Union. More details on the symposium can be found on the University of Oregon’s website.

Wildfires are a fact of life in California. As the flames die down and residents return, this moment presents an opportunity to think more holistically about reducing wildfire risk in Los Angeles and other fire-prone regions. “There’s a lot that we can do as residents and homeowners to really change that trajectory and make small, often inexpensive actions that can make a big difference in changing the outcome when our buildings are exposed to the pathways of wildfire,” said Yana Valachovic, a fire scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network… “I’m a licensed professional forester, so I will share my bias that I do like wood. We grow a lot of trees in California. It is our available natural resource, and I think it’s important to be able to use what you have in your community. The wood itself is combustible, but there are treatments that can make it fire-resistant.”

Dave Upthegrove

OLYMPIA — On his first day as Washington’s new commissioner of public lands… Dave Upthegrove knew one thing he would do right away: make good on a campaign promise by pausing for about six months on cutting unprotected, older forests on state trust land. …Upthegrove said he will direct his staff at the Department of Natural Resources to get a better handle on the older unprotected forests managed by the state: where they are, how much there is, and what criteria defines them. Some forests, or portions of them, might be released for cutting before the pause is up, depending on what is learned, Upthegrove said. The pause doesn’t mean the state will cut less timber overall, but it will change where the agency harvests, and what type of trees DNR cuts, Upthegrove said. …Nick Smith, with the American Forest Resource Council, an industry group, was skeptical. …Upthegrove’s decision to retain so many of the agency’s professional staff is reassuring, Smith said, and “we appreciate that he is accessible and willing to talk.”

…President Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders aimed at boosting fossil fuels production and mining on federal land… 60% of Oregon forests is owned by the federal government — and it’s managed primarily by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. The two agencies oversee more than 32 million acres in the state, and federal agencies are responsible for funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the state to manage those areas, including protecting endangered or threatened species. State and federal land often spill over borders, requiring federal collaboration with Oregon agencies and leaders, who espouse environmental values at odds with those of Trump. Gov. Tina Kotek, her natural resources advisor, Geoff Huntington, and the heads of Oregon’s environmental protection and natural resource agencies said they’ve been planning for this second Trump presidency. …[Both] told the Capital Chronicle they are hopeful for collaboration but prepared for conflict. 

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.