Richard Bennett
Richard Guy Bennett Sr., 92, a true pillar of the Idaho lumber industry and a beloved patriarch, passed away peacefully at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, on June 12, 2026. Born in Killam, Alberta, Canada on July 25, 1933, Richard spent his early years in Canada before the family relocated to Clarkston, Washington. His legendary journey in the timber industry began… in the early 1940s, his father secured a contract to manufacture ammunition boxes for the war effort. It soon became apparent that a dedicated facility was needed to support the increasing demand, and Bennett Box Factory was born. Over time, the operation expanded and evolved into a full-scale lumber mill. With Dick’s vision and leadership, the company continued to grow as he successfully negotiated the purchase of additional mills and timberlands, helping build one of the region’s most respected family-owned lumber businesses. …A funeral service will be held on Friday, June 26, 2026
Two new inspections into kraft pulp and paper mills in Washington have been opened, following ongoing investigations at the Nippon Dynawave mill where a tank failure killed 11 workers. The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries said investigations are going on at two other active paper mills in the state that use the same process, where caustic chemical compounds are used to help break down wood into pulp for paper product manufacturing. In the weeks following the implosion of a massive tank at the paper mill that spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals – believed to be the deadliest industrial accident in state history – managers of similar operations have been dialing up their insurance brokers to find out how well they’re protected. One investigation is occurring at a mill run by Smurfit Westrock, also in Longview. The other, run by Port Townsend Paper Company, is in Port Townsend.
Federal law allows utilities operating on national forest land to remove hazardous trees only within 10 feet of a power line. In Western forests, where trees routinely reach 100 feet tall and a single ignition can drive hundreds of thousands of acres of destruction, 10 feet is not a safety standard — it is a disaster waiting to happen. The Fix Our Forests Act would extend that authority to 150 feet, alongside streamlined federal permitting for wildfire mitigation work and tighter judicial review timelines on fuel-reduction projects… The bill has cleared the House by a 279-141 vote and passed the Senate Agriculture Committee by a vote of 18 to 5 … Utility operators across the West are calling for it. But it does not have the support of Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). …The community-owned utilities I represent … don’t have a stake in what gets logged. But they do have a stake in whether the lines stay up when fire moves through…
A historic drought is turning Colorado’s mountain landscapes into a tinderbox. After last winter’s record-low snowpack, wildland firefighters who continuously monitor indexes of weather and climate data to help predict wildfire risk and how conditions might affect fire behavior say they’re staring down unprecedented levels of dryness. “That lack of snowpack has had a very real impact on the fuels, the vegetation — specifically the large logs that are on the ground,” said Jim King, the fire behavior analyst for the Willow Fire burning near Leadville. “Those are 1,000-hour fuels. The way we measure those in this line of work, they’re just at the very peak. They’re basically as dry as they can get.” …King described how bone-dry logs in the dense forest near Turquoise Lake, along with high winds, contributed to 100-foot columns of flames and extreme fire behavior that at times threw “spots” …more than a half mile ahead of the blaze.
CALIFORNIA — A bipartisan bill intended to protect people and forests from wildfires in the Shasta-Trinity and other national forests is dividing lawmakers and conservationists in Northern California and nationwide. Supporters of the Fix Our Forests Act say it speeds up the bureaucratic process for approving projects that reduce wildfire risk in national forests. These include control burn and vegetation removal projects. A chorus of conservationists opposed to the bill say they worry about uncontrolled logging in some of the country’s pristine forestlands. …According to the bill’s wording, it would limit how much environmental protection oversight projects that reduce vegetation would have to surmount before they’re approved. It also would limit legal challenges to those projects from community and environmental groups. The latter has been dividing lawmakers across both parties for more than a year.
Officials at the U.S. Forest Service are proposing new management plans for eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains that include potentially tripling the amount of logging across 5.5 million acres in the next decade. The Forest Service published a draft of proposed changes to the 35-year-old Blue Mountain Forest Plan last week. It would allow more logging, mining and grazing across four national forests spread across eastern Oregon, as well as parts of southeast Washington: the Malheur, Ochoco, Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla National Forests. The public has until Sept. 30 to submit comments on the 350-page draft proposal. The draft plan … predicts everything from habitat conservation to forest carbon storage would improve over the long term if more logging is allowed because strategically logging and grazing parts of the forest would prevent wildfire, which officials characterize as the biggest threat to habitat and forest loss. Environmental advocates disagree with the framing.
OREGON — The federal government has released its long-awaited proposal to triple logging across three national forests in northeast Oregon and southeast Washington. But critics say the Trump administration’s effort to boost a flagging timber industry in the Blue Mountains could ultimately harm another key pillar of the local economy: Elk hunting. It could also push elk out of forests onto private land, where the animals could damage crops and other property, according to a regional manager with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The federal government’s plans for the Blue Mountains, which were released in draft form Thursday, could shape logging, recreation and environmental protections across 4.9 million acres spanning the Malheur, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman national forests for the next 15 years. …And more roads are likely to mean fewer elk. …People can weigh in on the 
A new lawsuit challenging a logging project in Oregon threatens to unravel the management plans governing hundreds of millions of acres of federal public land. At stake are thousands of leases and permits covering billions of dollars of economic activity — including mining, drilling, grazing, logging, ski resorts, wind and solar projects, outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing. If successful, the lawsuit could throw the management of huge swaths of the West into chaos. Some experts fear the new legal uncertainty around federal agencies’ management authority could unleash a tsunami of lawsuits targeting everything from mining to the conservation of wildlife habitat. “When you throw that whole system into chaos, it’s a problem whether you’re the oil and gas industry or the timber industry,” said Susan Jane Brown, the attorney who filed the lawsuit and serves as principal at Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm.
PHOENIX — New technology is coming to Arizona to predict flooding and prevent wildfires. Moisture sensors are going in the ground to gauge just how dry the land is. Soil that is too dry cannot absorb water, which creates a higher risk for flooding and wildfires. This advancement should help predict wildfires and flooding across Arizona. Salt River Project (SRP) officials say plant moisture, in both dead and alive plants, is one of the most important indicators of wildfire danger. However, taking field samples by hand is tough, so this new technology will do the heavy lifting. SRP crews in the Tonto National Forest are planting tiny pieces of technology in the ground to provide data. …These moisture measurements should provide important clues, like the risk of a wildfire at a given location, how likely it is to spread, how big it might get, and predicting floods.
MONTANA — More than 190,000 acres of recommended wilderness in the Flathead National Forest could be opened up to off-road vehicles (ORVs), according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture secretarial memorandum that leaked earlier this month. The memo, which laid out federal officials’ plans to unwind protections that have been in place in northwest Montana since 2018, prompted local and national advocacy groups to rush to action. Following four years of interagency collaboration, environmental analysis and an extensive public participation process, the Flathead National Forest’s Revised Land Management Plan was officially adopted in 2018, designating 193,403 acres of land as recommended wilderness… The New York Times earlier this month reported that a leaked memo directed the use of ORVs on 5 million acres in Montana and Idaho, 193,403 acres of which are within recommended wilderness areas on the Flathead National Forest. Local stakeholders say the directive would unwind years of collaborative work if it comes to fruition.
Colorado nonprofit, the 
RONALD, Wash. — The sound of wildfire prevention isn’t a fire engine siren. It’s chainsaws, wood chippers and heavy machinery chewing through brush. Across Kittitas County, crews are removing smaller trees, trimming limbs and clearing brush in an effort to reshape forests before the next wildfire season arrives. But the work underway here is also challenging one of the most deeply held ideas many people have about forests: That more trees always means a healthier forest. “Green is good,” said Katie Zander, the North Service Forestry coordinator for the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Southeast Region. “But out here historically we did not have this dense of forest stands.” According to Zander, eastern Washington forests evolved with regular low-intensity fires that naturally cleared out brush and smaller trees. But decades of aggressive wildfire suppression changed that pattern.
The Trump administration is about to propose an overhaul of how it manages nearly 5 million acres in northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. Logging could triple in the Umatilla, Malheur and Wallowa-Whitman national forests, which comprise the U.S. Forest Service’s Blue Mountains region. The agency’s proposal would eliminate regulations that protect large trees and sensitive habitats. It would also boost timber sale goals from 106 million board feet to 364 million over a decade. That’s raising hopes in a region where timber jobs have declined and lumber mills have closed. But others doubt the timber goals. And environmental groups have called the plan a raid on one of the wildest places in the United States. …Mark Webb, executive director of Blue Mountains Forest Partners — which coordinates between environmental and timber interests to find common ground — doubts whether the forest service can reach the ambitious logging goals it sets forth in its draft proposal.
Fire season has begun in Oregon. Hot and dry conditions have forest managers across the state on edge as the season officially started June 15, bringing with it restrictions meant to prevent wildfires. The main restriction is a prohibition on debris and backyard burning on state, county and private lands, although official rules are set by local fire districts. Debris burning is the most frequent human cause of wildfires that spread in populated areas. “With it being this hot and dry, one little bit of wind could spread an ember and start a fire. It’s the perfect time to cover your pile and wait until fall,” Oregon Department of Forestry spokeswoman Jessica Neujahr said.
…After decades of biologists going out into the woods and physically counting animals, the agency is now turning to sound recorders and AI because they’re cheaper and can gather a lot more information. “Autonomous recording units with rechargeable batteries, memory cards, and the software costs are coming in the $600-$700 range per device,” said Oregon Department of Forestry biologist Corey Grinnell. The agency is currently spending millions to send biologists into the forests to conduct callback surveys, where they mimic a bird call and count responses. …The agency now has 23 devices and plans to deploy more as it moves away from callback surveys. …There is some concern that using recorders might put biologists out of work. But lead ODF biologist Vanessa Petro isn’t so sure. She said that once the AI counts birds in a recording, the tally will need to be checked by an actual biologist.
…Decades of fire suppression have left many dry pine forests overcrowded with small trees and dense brush. …Foresters largely agree on the solution: restore forests through thinning and prescribed fire. The problem is that restoration work is expensive, especially when it involves removing small-diameter trees that have little commercial value. …Taxpayers shoulder most of the burden while hazardous fuels continue accumulating across millions of acres. …Oregon is well positioned to tackle this problem. New wood products such as mass timber can create markets for the very material that restoration projects remove. Instead of treating small trees as waste, we can turn them into building materials… The goal is to keep large fire-resistant trees while removing smaller fuels that make forests more vulnerable to extreme fires. …Oregon already has the tools and workforce to address this problem. The question is whether we are willing to act before the next historic fire season arrives.
Deming, Washington — Leroy Sande was pioneering a road with his excavator in Southeast Alaska when stumps, rocks, everything else — including his rig — started to pitch down the hillside. As if reaching out with his own arm, the logger instinctively grabbed at the slick sandstone beneath 10 feet of soil with the excavator’s bucket. “Well, you ain’t grabbing sandstone,” Sande, now 83, recalled. “…There was nothing to grab onto that wasn’t going down the hill.” About 400 yards down slope, the excavator tipped over and came to a stop. It was the only time in his 50-plus-year career in the woods that Sande put an excavator on its side, and even then, he emerged from the machine unscathed. Logging is the most deadly occupation in the nation… Injuries that aren’t fatal can put someone out of work for weeks, months, years or the rest of their life. The annual 
Wildfires are reversing decades of air quality improvements across much of the US. Expanded use of prescribed fire is a primary proposed solution, but air quality trade-offs—more initial smoke for less smoke later—remain poorly quantified. Using two decades of satellite-derived measurements of fire severity and smoke particulate matter across California, we assessed the causal effect of low-severity wildfire, a proxy for prescribed burning, on subsequent wildfire activity and air quality. We found that low-severity fire reduced the probability of very-high-severity wildfire by 92%, with reductions lasting a decade and extending 5 kilometers from treated locations. Reduced future smoke far outweighed the smoke produced during treatment, with benefit-cost ratios exceeding five after a decade. Sustained treatment of 500,000 acres annually would reduce cumulative smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by about 10% after a decade.
OREGON — A proposed new management strategy for the three national forests in Northeastern Oregon could more than triple the amount of commercial logging over the next two decades. The Forest Service hasn’t officially released a draft environmental impact statement for the revised management plans for the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur national forests, which will start a 90-day public comment period. …Shaun McKinney, Wallowa-Whitman supervisor, said on Wednesday that he expects the Forest Service will publish the draft in the Federal Register “any time.” …Typically, national forests update their plans every 15 years or so. But the current plans for the three forests in the Blue Mountains date to 1990. The three forests encompass about 5.5 million acres, including about 311,000 acres in Washington that are part of the Umatilla National Forest. 
The Gold Mountain fire in Ouray County, west of Pueblo, has now burned more than 32,000 acres, but firefighters were hoping to make progress Thursday before forecast hot weather begins this weekend. In the latest update from the fire incident management team, authorities said 984 people were working on the blaze, which is now 8% contained. Much of the focus remains on protecting any structures that might be threatened by the fire, which has closed areas to the public in the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forests. Jeramy Dietz, operations section chief for the incident management team, said firefighters were pleased to be able to allow some people back into the area to see their homes on the southwest side of the fire. Now, a lot of the focus is on getting containment lines built to the north and east of the active fire.
Boise Fire Department officials asked the public to leave the popular Ridge to Rivers Trail System and the Bureau of Land Management issued a temporary closure of BLM-managed public lands and trails after a wildfire started in the Boise Foothills on Monday afternoon. Just after 2 p.m. Mountain time Monday, Boise Fire Department officials announced they were responding to a grass fire that started near the 1900 block of N. Claremont Drive. As Tuesday morning, the cause of the fire was unknown and under active investigation. The fire is burning in the Boise Foothills, about two miles northwest of Boise. …The U.S Wildland Fire Service – Great Basin is referring to the fire as the Claremont Fire. The fire has burned an estimated 2,500 acres as of Tuesday morning, the service reported. …According the press release, firefighters are also facing unique challenges within portions of the area’s Military Reserve.
