Region Archives: US West

The article by Rob Davis of ProPublica and reprinted in The Oregonian/OregonLive does not report what the timber industry currently pays in taxes, (“The Oregon timber industry won huge tax cuts in the 1990s. Now it may get another break thanks to a top lawmaker,” Feb. 2). A 2021 analysis for the Oregon Forest Industries Council by the accounting firm Ernst & Young found that the tax burden on the forest sector was greater than that of other businesses in the state. Even after the reductions in the 1990s, Oregon’s forest industry paid taxes that amount to 5.6% of their gross valued added product, or 6.8% if fire-suppression assessments are included. That’s far higher than the 3.7% paid by Oregon manufacturers and the 4.4% paid by all businesses in the state. Without these facts, readers are left with an incomplete and misleading picture.

Nick Smith

The U.S. Forest Service has proposed amending all 128 land management plans across the nation to establish a “consistent approach” to conserving old growth forests on federal lands. Is such a broad stroke really the most effective way to address the complexities of sustaining the oldest and largest trees in different parts of the country — from Montana to Florida? The proposal is rooted in President Biden’s 2022 Earth Day executive order that, in part, directed federal agencies to define mature and old-growth forests on federal lands, complete an inventory and make it publicly available, identify threats to these forests, and develop policies to address these threats. …The analysis confirmed previous reports that wildfire, insects and disease, not logging, posed the most significant threat to older forests. …Rather than imposing top-down directives, a better approach is to empower local land managers and stakeholders to implement practical, on-the-ground actions that provide real results.

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.  — A man whose family’s gender reveal photo shoot sparked a Southern California wildfire that killed a firefighter in 2020 has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, prosecutors said Friday. The El Dorado Fire erupted on Sept. 5, 2020, when Refugio Jimenez Jr. and Angelina Jimenez and their young children staged gender reveal at El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa. A smoke-generating pyrotechnic device was set off in a field and quickly ignited dry grass on a scorching day. …Charles Morton, leader of the elite Big Bear Interagency Hotshot Squad, was killed on Sept. 17, 2020, when flames overran a remote area where firefighters were cutting fire breaks. …Refugio Jimenez Jr. will serve a year in jail. His sentence also includes two years of felony probation and 200 hours of community service. Angelina Jimenez was sentenced to a year of summary probation and 400 hours of community service. The couple was also ordered to pay $1,789,972 in restitution.

The new film “California’s Watershed Healing” documents the huge benefits that result from restoring forests to healthier densities. UC Merced’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute partnered with the nonprofit Chronicles Group to tell the story of these efforts, the science behind them, and pathways that dedicated individuals and groups are pioneering to scale up these urgent climate solutions. “California’s forests are at a tipping point, owing to both climate stress and past unsustainable management practices that suppressed wildfires and prioritized timber harvesting,” explained UC Merced Professor Roger Bales, who was involved in developing the film. Covering over 30 million acres – nearly a third of the state – these iconic ecosystems provide water, recreation, habitat, carbon storage and serve other needs. But they now contain too many trees, packed too closely together. …The film explores how scaling up promising investments can ensure a more sustainable future.

Crook County is calling for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to rethink its plans to amend every national forest land management in the nation to create one overall strategy for managing old-growth forests. In a comment letter signed by the county commissioners last week, the county criticizes the one-size-fits-all approach and the USFS’s failure to include local governments in the process. “Upon reading through it, it will affect all the National Forests in Wyoming, which includes the Black Hills; it will also include Thunder Basin National Grasslands,” said Dru Palmer, consultant for the county, at a special meeting on Thursday. …“I think treating old growth different to the rest of the forests is self-defeating anyway, because if you save all the old growth, guess what’s going to burn first,” he said. “They’re swimming upstream there, I think.”

Additional coverage in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle: Gordon slams ‘top-down’ approach to old-growth forest management

Natasha Majewski

Old-growth forests provide all of us with so many benefits… But it’s no secret that our forests are in trouble because of threats associated with climate change, including drought, pests, disease and risk of wildfire…. These threats are especially prevalent in Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada. …That’s why I’m thrilled that in late December, the U.S. Forest Service announced an historic plan to protect older forests and encourage adaptive management to ensure old-growth forests survive and thrive for generations to come. …Mature and old forests need our help. If they are to persist and flourish, we need to adopt smart policies to steward these irreplaceable resources. I applaud the Forest Service for taking this long overdue action, and the Nevada Wildlife Federation looks forward to working with the agency and with Tribal and local leaders to safeguard our forest lands for the benefit of all of us.

Randy Moore

OREGON — Drawing loggers from around the Pacific Northwest and some much farther, the 86th Oregon Logging Conference Feb. 22 to 24 in Eugene, Oregon, provides key resources for logging contractors, including sessions covering the latest in regulatory issues and business management topics along with the big draw. …With so many loggers attending from Washington and Oregon, seminars giving updates for issues in both states are popular. The Oregon-based seminar will cover changes on tap for private forests as the state moves to make changes to forest management regulations and the implications for loggers and landowners. The Washington specific seminar will cover regulatory changes plus better ways landowners and contractors can communicate with state agencies. …Randy Moore, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, will be the keynote speaker at the 86th Annual Oregon Logging Conference.

HELENA, Mont. – Governor Greg Gianforte today led a coalition of six governors in criticizing federal agencies for plans to adopt new forest management rules without addressing state concerns. In a letter to President Biden and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Vilsack, the governors wrote in response to a notice of intent (NOI) by the USDA and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to prepare an environmental impact statement amending all land management systems to include old-growth forest conditions without engaging with states. …”We have watched this effort unfold over two years. …USDA and USFS leadership have failed to engage with us to address any of the challenges and flaws we have identified with this old–growth forest policy”. …the governors also noted that the proposed amendment would run counter to State Forest Action Plans adopted to address forest health and wildfires.

The future of our planet remains in our hands at the moment. But any solutions toward a sustainable future lie at the intersection of forests, climate and human rights. For nearly 40 years, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has undertaken bold campaigns to hold some of the world’s biggest corporations accountable for business models that are linked to forest destruction, loss of biodiversity, climate change, and the marginalization of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights and livelihoods. We now find ourselves in 2024 — six years until the indisputable, internationally agreed upon deadline to cut global emissions by half if we want to mitigate the most disastrous effects of climate change. In developing our ambitious five-year strategic plan over the past year, we have reflected on the impact of our four decades of challenging corporate power and systemic injustice while considering how our campaigns can evolve to meet the growing urgency of our times.

As residential populations flanking the Kootenai National Forest expand, and as wildland fires grow in intensity due to climate change, land managers are proposing new strategies to improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfire in northwest Montana’s Lincoln County, where thousands of forested acres have been identified as high-risk firesheds eligible for emergency intervention. The latest example of this is the Glen Sinclair Fuel Reduction Project on the Kootenai National Forest’s Rexford and Fortine Ranger Districts near Eureka, where District Ranger Seth Carbonari is proposing vegetation and prescribed fire treatments as part of a mitigation strategy to “reduce the risk and extent of catastrophic wildfires to the communities, forests and infrastructure within the wildland urban interface of Lincoln County,” according to the scoping document. Forest managers are seeking public feedback as they review the project under the National Environmental Policy Act’s (NEPA) categorical exclusion rule.

Gloria Brown

After completing forestry at Oregon State University the BLM offered me a field manager position in Baker City, Oregon. I was the first female African-American field manager ever hired in the BLM! My career spanned 33 years (1974 – 2007), and I can count on one hand the number of times that I was in a meeting in which there were other African-Americans. It is unusual to find an African-American female in a natural resource career, let alone as a forester. …Most of my experiences confirmed that BLM and Forest Service managers are treated with respect. I found that if you communicate with and listen to people, and if you have a good reputation for knowing your job and making good decisions, people are willing to give you a chance. …I did not experience any outright prejudice. Employees and the public were more interested in how well I did my job than the color of my skin. 

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) is providing up to $8 million in funding for Wildfire Resilience Block Grants. This funding supports California’s goals of improved forest health, resilience to climate change, and reduced forestland impacts due to devastating wildfires in line with the goals of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force. Block grants will be awarded to eligible entities who have the capacity to deliver forestry-based technical and financial assistance programs to non-industrial forest landowners ranging in size from three to 5,000 acres. Eligible entities must be capable of acting as lead agency for California Environmental Quality Act projects. In addition, $1 million of the $8 million in funding will be allocated specifically for forest stewardship education.

Democratic lawmakers are split over whether a greater share of the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to protect the state from wildfires should come from all Oregon taxpayers or from the private property and business owners whose valuable assets receive state protection. During the five weeks of the Legislative session, Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, D-Portland and Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth will both attempt to convince their peers to ask the public for more money, and Steiner also will propose reducing costs for the timber industry. Two of their colleagues – Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, and Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene – will make the case that the timber industry has been allowed for too long to contribute too little and needs to step up to fill funding gaps. At stake is not only the ability for state agencies to prevent and fight wildfires, but also widely needed resources for communities and homeowners … to stop fires from spreading.

In the 1990s, Oregon’s powerful timber industry used its influence to win a series of tax cuts that have cost local governments a cumulative $3 billion. …Now the industry is in line for another tax break. With the costs of fighting Oregon’s wildfires climbing, the timber industry worked with policymakers behind closed doors to develop legislation that would reduce what industrial forest owners pay for protecting their cash crop from flames. Timber lobbyists not only helped write the bill, they even helped write a top lawmaker’s talking points. …Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, a Portland Democrat. Steiner, one of the state’s top budget writers, wants taxpayers to pay $7 million more annually for fighting fires so timber and ranching interests can pay less. Her rationale: fairness. She says wildfires affect everyone, not just timberland and ranchland owners. Meanwhile, a competing effort would do the opposite: raise taxes on timber.

Washington lawmakers are looking to quell some of the backlash over new wildfire-related building codes set to take effect in March, while also trying to keep homes on the edge between wooded and developed areas safe from the blazes. The “wildland urban interface” codes require new construction and renovations to use certain fire-resistant materials and to limit trees and other vegetation around structures. They sparked criticism from builders, cities and environmentalists who say the rules will be expensive to follow and could result in excessive tree cutting. Now, lawmakers are moving ahead with Senate Bill 6120, which would require the Department of Natural Resources to create a new wildfire risk map. The map update would likely narrow where the new rules apply. The bill would also ditch tree-clearing requirements in the code. …Requirements for fire-resistant materials for roofing, exterior walls, decks and porches would move forward.

Since 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan has governed management of national forests across the Pacific Northwest. It was developed to strike a balance between conservation of old-growth wildlife habitat and the needs of human communities in a rapidly growing region. Depending on who you ask, it’s either been a resounding success or an abysmal failure. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. The U.S. Forest Service is taking public comment on the plan until Friday – we have a unique opportunity for improvement. As the agency proceeds, they must ensure the updated plan conserves all remaining old-growth forests, improves resilience to climate change, and benefits rural and Indigenous communities. …The Northwest Forest Plan was ahead of its time 30 years ago, but our understanding of our forests has advanced. Now is the time to build on the successes and address its shortcomings as well as its unintended and unanticipated consequences. 

The Biden administration’s December announcement that it plans to protect from logging old-growth trees such as those slated for removal in the Yaak’s Black Ram timber sale, is a reason for everyone to celebrate. Few old-growth forest lands remain in the West and even fewer in Montana. …These forests are critical to mitigating climate change and once lost, will take centuries to replace. We simply don’t have the time. Old growth trees range in age from 100 to more than 1,000 years old. Some trees marked for cutting in the Black Ram Project, halted by the 9th Circuit Court in 2023, exceed 500 years of age. We advocate for protecting these ancient trees as part of our nation’s first Climate Refuge, the initial step in creating a curtain of green which would stretch across the northern tier of the globe and play a vital role in ameliorating the biodiversity crisis and slowing climate change.

Forests and wildlife are dealing with a winter whiplash. Last winter produced enormous amounts of snow and an infamous polar vortex, even as 2023 in its entirety was one of the hottest years on record for Minnesota and the globe. While there have been periods of intense cold this winter, there has been little snow.  “If this winter is a one-off, and then next winter we have lots of snow, the effects can be different than if we have three of these kinds of winters back to back,” said John Erb, wolf research scientist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. …Some of northernmost Minnesota is host to boreal forests… These forests are home to wildlife, including endangered animals such as the Canada lynx — but also make up the world’s largest terrestrial carbon storage system. If those forests recede or shrink, that could result in species loss and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Senator Weber and Representative Javadi are peddling a false narrative about a mill closure in Banks, on behalf of the timber industry. The facts: Hampton Lumber, headquartered in Portland, made a business decision to invest $150 million into expanding its mill in Willamina thanks to state and local tax breaks. At the same time, it chose to close an ageing Banks mill (40 miles from Willamina) which is in need of substantial upgrades. This a clear case of corporate restructuring and consolidation made by Hampton executives in Portland, not the failure of the state Habitat Conservation Plan. But Hampton — and Weber and Javadi working on behalf of an industry that paid for their elections — blamed the State Forest Habitat Conservation Plan for the Banks mill closure. This so the company wouldn’t have to come clean to its workers in Banks: the truth is, the company doesn’t need them anymore.

Tree climbing is an indispensable component of forestry work, serving as a vital means to access the canopy. In the Northwest, pine cone collection is one of the primary reasons for tree climbing. Without the ability to collect cones, scientists would face significant challenges in understanding tree health, and reestablishing forests would be an arduous task. But cone collection is dangerous work and involves maneuvering in some of the world’s tallest trees. As a result, the U.S. Forest Service mandates that all climbers acquire proper certification. Tree climbing school, located in Cottage Grove, Oregon, is a four-day crash course in tree climbing that takes place every June. The event hosts some of the country’s most skilled climbers and climbing instructors, drawing in students from all over the U.S. who work as biologists, arborists, technicians, and even smoke jumpers. Skill levels range from experienced climbers to absolute beginners.

CALIFORNIA — The Stanislaus National Forest is touting $57.6 million in Stanislaus Wildfire Crisis Strategy Landscape funding the federal government recently budgeted for fiscal year 2024, more than double the $21.8 million the forest received for wildlife crisis strategy efforts in 2022. That 2022 funding helped create about 100 new jobs in Tuolumne County last year, so hopes are high that more than double that amount will create even more new jobs in the county later this year. Both federal funding injections for the forest that covers more than 40% of the county’s land area have occurred since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. …With the Social and Ecological Resilience Across the Landscape (SERAL) Project already underway, the Stanislaus National Forest was identified as one of 10 national forests in need of a Wildfire Crisis Strategy plan.

There’s so much wrong with a logging project in Bitterroot National Forest, so many illegalities, omissions, and disregard for the foundational laws, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Bitterroot, Native Ecosystems Council, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection and Wildearth Guardians had no choice but to try to take this project to court due to its negative impacts on fish, wildlife and the forested landscape. …Despite the enormous size of the project, the Forest Service did not disclose where the logging and burning would take place. …While whitebark pine was recently added to the Endangered Species List, the Forest Service has yet to receive authority from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to move forward with the Project and has also failed to its duty to maintain and restore these vanishing trees as required by the Endangered Species Act.

On Thursday, U.S. Representative Kim Schrier(WA-08) was joined by 4 other Representatives in sending a bipartisan letter to the Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan, Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Mandy Cohen calling for further interagency collaboration to combat the rising threat of wildfire smoke and increase the practice of safe controlled burning (often referred to as prescribed fire). …Schrier’s letter encourages the EPA, CDC, Department of the Interior, and Department of Agriculture to work together to coordinate and approve the expanded use of prescribed fires, which mitigate the risk and subsequent health impacts of large, catastrophic fires. …Unfortunately, “business as usual” arrangements between the respective agencies have stymied the widespread use of this effective forest management method.