Region Archives: US West

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.