Region Archives: US West

OREGON — On January 1, 2024, new rules regarding harvesting timber and to better protect fish and wildlife will go into effect, according to the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF). ODF says the rule changes came about from legislation that supported the landmark Private Forest Accord which was an agreement between the timber industry, small forest landowners, and conservation groups. “These are the most sweeping changes to the Forest Practices Act (FPA) since it was enacted in 1973,” said Jennifer Ward, Forest Resources Division training coordinator. “We are providing several training opportunities to help people better understand the changes and the possible impacts on their land.” The main overview training is titled: Forest Practices Act changes—streams, roads and more. …The department says training will also focus on programs specifically designed to help the owners of small acreage forestlands.

CHELAN COUNTY, Wash — As climate change worsens, forest health is taking a hit in the form of insects, leading to increased wildfire danger. Glenn Kohler, forest entomologist for the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR), said there are about a dozen bark beetle species that are considered pests. In the last decade, Kohler said DNR has seen a trend where changing environmental factors are creating a situation where these pests thrive, increasing their negative impact. …When the beetles kill trees, those dead trees then fill forests, eventually falling and blanketing forest floors, creating a situation where wildfires spread faster due to all the dry fuels. …The problem is that environmental factors recently have given the beetles a space to thrive, so DNR is seeing an increase in dead trees. 

Deep in the woods of the Weyerhaeuser Vail Tree Farm, over 40 exhibitors in the forestry industry demonstrated the ins and outs of timber harvesting at the ninth Pacific Logging Congress Live In-Woods Show during the weekend of Sept. 21-23. The event was in Washington state for the first time in 13 years, as it occurs every four years and cycles between Washington, Oregon and California. howGalen Wright, a forestry consultant based in Olympia who has worked in the industry for 45 years, said the event is a great opportunity for people, especially the more than 2,000 students from 31 different schools on field trips, to learn about the forestry industry. It’s amazing how much we’ve mechanized the industry,” he said. …The event showcased both the Weyerhaeuser Vail Tree Farm in Rainier, as well as active and static industry displays.

Mike Garrity

Once again, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Center for Biological Diversity and Council for Wildlife and Fish are challenging the Biden administration’s Forest Service on yet another massive clearcutting. This time it’s the South Plateau Project, right on the border of Yellowstone National Park. Yes, you read that right — Biden’s Forest Service is planning to clearcut the National Forests surrounding Yellowstone and our only hope of stopping them is going to court to force this rogue, law-breaking agency to follow the law.  …The agency failed to disclose the climate change impacts in blatant violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.  …The agency failed to even tell the public precisely where, when, or how it would bulldoze roads and clearcut the National Forest. Of course, that makes it impossible for the public, who own these forests, to review and analyze the project’s impacts as required by law. 

PORTLAND, Oregon — An annual conference of international timber industry leaders will focus this week in Portland on the ownership and development of Northwest forests while protestors gather and hold their own conference on preserving them. The industry conference, on Wednesday and Thursday, will feature panels on investments in private forests, with participants discussing everything from investments by international banks, timber companies and trusts to the future of private forest ownership and global markets for Northwest timber and wood products. It’s hosted by the 50-year-old nonprofit World Forestry Center in southwest Portland. …For the first time, it will face protests by more than two dozen environmental groups. Alex Budd said he’s expecting up to 200 people. …The forest climate alliance will hold a counter conference on Thursday in Portland, two miles from the World Forestry Center at the First Unitarian Church of Portland called “Forests Over Profits.”

In the Lolo National Forest outside Missoula, tall piles of dead branches and hand-thinned small trees dot the forest floor on either side of a dirt road. The mounds of woody debris are evidence of treatments being applied to the forest to slow future wildfires. The work is called a shaded fuel break, and the piles will eventually be burned. The goal is to improve firefighter and public safety and minimize the chance of a landscape-scale wildland fire. The use of fuel breaks as a fire management strategy is not uncommon, but there is something unique about these particular control lines: Their location was determined using a new risk-assessment tool. Potential Operational Delineations, also known as PODs, is the name of a collaborative risk-based framework designed to help fire managers and landowners get on the same page before fires start. 

SACRAMENTO – Today Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state has awarded $19 million for 13 projects as part of the nation-leading Tribal Wildfire Resilience Grant Program launched earlier this month. This funding supports California Native American tribes in managing ancestral lands, employing traditional ecological knowledge in wildfire resilience, and improving wildfire safety for tribal and surrounding communities. Developed in partnership with tribes to best meet the needs of their governments and communities, the Tribal Wildfire Resilience Grant Program supports wildfire resilience goals shared by all of California – with a focus on areas most impacted by catastrophic fires and areas that will most benefit from tribal partnership and the additional wildfire management that comes from that.

The state of Alaska, a coalition of business groups and a pair of electric-power organizations have opened a new round in the generation-long fight over environmental protections in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. On Sept. 8, the state and two other groups of plaintiffs filed three separate federal lawsuits to challenge a Biden administration rule restricting new roads in parts of the forest, which is home to some of America’s last stands of old-growth trees. …Gov. Mike Dunleavy said that “Alaskans deserve access to the resources that the Tongass provides — jobs, renewable energy resources, and tourism, not a government plan that treats human beings within a working forest like an invasive species.” …In the years since attorney Jim Clark first worked on the issue, Southeast Alaska’s logging industry has almost entirely vanished. Overturning the Roadless Rule isn’t about clear-cutting anymore, he said. Instead, it’s about improving access for projects that now need special approval.

David Blunck has spent years studying how wildfires spread. But his academic research turned personal in September 2020, he said, when a wildfire neared his parents’ home in Canby. Blunck, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State University, knew the danger wasn’t from a wall of flames engulfing the home. Instead, it came from firebrands, windblown embers that can travel a mile or more, sparking new fires. …Blunck’s team at OSU tests how variables such as temperature, wind speed, timber species and tree size impact how firebrands form and travel. …The research results now can be used in models that predict fire behavior, Blunck said. Funding for the project came from the federal government’s Joint Fire Science Program and National Institute of Standards and Technology. Blunck now wants to know how firebrands form in and spread from structures. 

WILSONVILLE, Ore. — Oregon Department of Forestry is warning about an invasive insect from Europe and the Middle East that attacks oak trees.  Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) says the insect recently has been found in several Oregon white oaks in Wilsonville. The Mediterranean oak borer (Xyleborus monographus) transmits fungal species to the trees it infests, and some fungal species can cause a disease called oak wilt, which can kill oak trees within two to three years.  ODF says the Mediterranean oak borer (MOB) is a tiny woodboring beetle called an ambrosia beetle because instead of feeding on wood, “it eats fungus grown in galleries created in the wood of branches and trunks. The fungus grows, robbing tree canopies of water necessary for growth and survival.”

Oregon’s coastal communities that rely on drinking water from forested rivers and creeks have lost substantial tree cover during the last 20 years, a recent NASA analysis found. That’s bad news for residents and the environment, the report indicates. Forests not only improve the quality of surface waters, but also the quantity. …And more than 80% of Oregonians, including most who live on the coasts, get some or all of their drinking water from surface water sources such as streams, rivers and creeks, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. …Seth Barnes, forest policy director for the Oregon Forest Industries Council, said the more than 50-year-old Oregon Forest Practices Act, currently being updated, strongly protects water in Oregon’s logged forests. “There’s really literally hundreds of protections that are put in place when anything is harvested in the state of Oregon,” Barnes said.

Ryan Reed

Ryan Reed grew up in the Klamath River … as a member of the Karuk, Hupa and Yurok tribes, Reed had learned how fire could be used to restore the forest and river, improving the ecosystem for salmon, elk, oak and hazelnut trees. He became a wildland firefighter in college and has fought to help reinstate the ancient art of lighting controlled fires – both to sustain his people’s cultural identity and as a solution to catastrophic wildfires in the era of climate change. Now, the 23-year-old graduate of the University of Oregon is reshaping how federal forests are managed in Oregon and throughout the Northwest. He’s the public representative on the Federal Advisory Committee that will recommend updates to the Northwest Forest Plan, a blueprint that will guide forest management in the region through the next century. The committee launched its work earlier this month in Portland.

The Elliott State Forest took a big step recently on its way to becoming the country’s largest research forest, by finding a site for its headquarters. Oregon lawmakers established the 82,000-acre Elliott State Research Forest outside of Reedsport in 2022. Last week, the Department of State Lands finalized the transfer of the former Shutter Creek Correctional Facility northwest of the forest, so it can become the research headquarters. State Lands spokesperson Ali Ryan Hansen said U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden secured $4 million for site renovations and rehabilitation in Congress’s fiscal year 2023 omnibus appropriations package. Work still needs to be done to convert the facility. …Ryan Hansen said the Elliott Forest is on traditional land of both the Coos and Lower Umpqua peoples. She said there’s potential to co-steward the forest and bring tribal knowledge to the research. 

JUNEAU – On Friday, Sept. 8, 2023, a group of 24 diverse, statewide Alaska resource associations, Southeast Alaska communities, utilities, and businesses filed a Complaint opposing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) reimposition of the 2001 Roadless Rule on the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. This challenge is about Alaskans’ broader rights of access – to communities and resources. This lawsuit seeks to reverse the reimposition of the roadless rule in Alaska that currently blocks access for mining and hydroelectric facilities. The ability to provide inexpensive, efficient, and clean hydropower to Southeast residents and businesses is severely limited by the Roadless Rule. Timber harvest is currently prohibited in the 9.4 million acres known as Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) by the 2016 Tongass Forest Plan. This lawsuit does not seek to change that. It would take Forest Service rulemaking and the Environmental Impact Statement process to change that Forest Plan.

George Wuerthnor

The Forest Service and Forestry School researchers (funded by the Forest Service) continue to promote the idea that our forests are “unhealthy.” It is an example of the “Father Knows Best” philosophy. And, of course, it also assumes that the forest needs repairing. The problem with the Forest Service’s current love affair with chainsaw medicine is that it assumes that anything that kills a tree (except a chainsaw) is undesirable. The agency and its lackeys are like the snake oil salesman of old, promising that their magic elixir (logging) can cure whatever ails the forest, whether it is sick or not. We are told that chainsaw medicine treatments aim to reduce large, high-severity wildfires and enable trees to survive insects, drought and disease. …[they] have no idea which trees may have a genetic trait that allows them to survive… They are …interfering with evolution. That is a dangerous game to play.

George Ochenski

A recent column by an Oregon timber industry mouthpiece assailed two of Montana’s federal court judges claiming: “Bad juju is drifting through the halls of the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Missoula.” Apparently he thinks it’s “bad juju” because they found the Forest Service’s planned logging projects in Northwest Montana violated federal law. …The definition of juju surely has nothing to do with a court of law. …But according to this guy, who thinks Montana should follow Oregon’s path to unsustainable logging, the real problem is that the Equal Access to Justice Act gives citizens the right to challenge government actions in a court of law. There are a lot of things that are easy to do in this world —but challenging the federal government in court is not one of them. Given that the resources of the entire federal bureaucracy are at the disposal of the Forest Service to fight lawsuits, for plaintiffs to win is very difficult indeed.

This is the sad tale of a watershed on the north Oregon coast. Jetty Creek is a small coastal stream flowing into Nehalem Bay that provides drinking water to the small communities of Rockaway Beach, Twin Rocks and Nedonna Beach. In the late 1990’s the forest canopy in the Jetty Creek watershed was healthy and intact and the stream ran clear and cold. Over the past 20 years, this corporate-owned 1,340-acre watershed has suffered a 90% loss of its forested canopy due to intense timber harvesting, and is now one of the most extensively logged watersheds on the Oregon Coast. …Private timber companies own almost 50% of the watersheds in western Oregon supplying drinking water to downstream communities, and almost 60% of the drinking water systems tested in Oregon had detectable levels of pesticides in their water.

Three environmental groups signalled Wednesday their intention to stop a 16,000-acre logging and prescribed-fire project located in a national forest west of Yellowstone National Park. In their notice of intent to sue the Custer Gallatin National Forest, the Center for Biological Diversity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Council on Wildlife and Fish argued that the South Plateau Project’s clear-cutting, logging and road-building will threaten grizzly bears and lynx, both of which are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act. The groups also said the Forest Service’s plan to identify areas to be logged only after crews are on the ground inhibits public involvement and precludes adequate analysis of potential harm to wildlife. …Nick Mustoe, ranger for the Hebgen Lake Ranger District, cleared the project when he signed a decision last month finding that the proposal “would meet the need for action and would not result in effects to the human environment.” 

SACRAMENTO – A new tool is aiming to make neighborhoods safer from wildfires by linking state agencies together. It’s a new database that looks at how wildfire prevention projects are going. It’s called the Interagency Treatment Dashboard, a new tool created by the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force. The dashboard acts as a hub to see all projects in progress and past aimed at preventing wildfires. Director of the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force Patrick Wright said it helps coordinate and unify agencies in a way that has not been done before. “The public and others will see firsthand everything that has been done by federal, state, local, tribal, and private entities throughout the entire year,” Wright said.

Researchers have found a way to predict whether or not a forest will survive based on drought conditions – information that can help forest managers deal with climate change.  The researchers from the University of California Davis looked at a drought that caused the loss of tens of millions of trees in the Sierra Nevada forest from 2012 to 2015. In the early years, the trees were doing fine, despite drought conditions. But by 2015, 80% of them were essentially dead.   …If there’s a drought – much like when someone forgets to water a plant – trees will stop growing leaves. Without those leaves, it becomes harder and harder for photosynthesis to occur – until there’s a tipping point when the trees lose their ability to store and convert carbon dioxide. …“Even when the rains come back, if you don’t have any reserves to even perform the basic functions, your (trees) are effectively dead,” Au said. “The water stress depletes your carbon reserves.” 

Jim Petersen

Bad juju is drifting through the halls of the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Missoula. How else to explain the Court’s rejection of two forest restoration projects on the Kootenai National Forest in only 41 days. Judge Donald Malloy shut down the Black Ram Project on Aug. 17 and Judge Dana Christensen’s July 7 ruling upended the Ripley Project. …Protection requires a manufacturing facility capable of processing removed wood fiber — an essential first step in protecting interface homes and forests from wildfire. Planning for a small log mill gave the economically depressed area hope for the future. Those plans are now up in smoke. …Congress needs to sever the connection between the anti-forestry mob and the Equal Access to Justice Act. Taxpayers should not have to pay the legal fees for eco-terrorists that raise billions of dollars annually from their donors.

The Elliott State Forest took a big step recently on its way to becoming the country’s largest research forest, by finding a site for its headquarters.  Oregon lawmakers established the 82,000 acre Elliott State Research Forest outside of Reedsport in 2022. Last week, the Department of State Lands finalized the transfer of the former Shutter Creek Correctional Facility northwest of the forest, so it can become the research headquarters.  State Lands spokesperson Ali Ryan Hansen said U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden secured $4 million for site renovations and rehabilitation in Congress’s fiscal year 2023 omnibus appropriations package.  Work still needs to be done to convert the facility.  “There’s an early vision for what the site could look like,” Hansen said, “and that is to include laboratory space, classroom spaces, dormitories and offices, as well as housing partnerships potentially with tribes and other local entities.”

A new partnership between NASA and researchers is measuring the impact of beavers reintroduced to landscapes in Idaho. Beavers are one of the world’s most powerful ecosystem engineers, building new habitats by slowing water flow and reducing flooding, while also boosting biodiversity. Beavers are all the more important in an age of rapid climate change, as they produce wetter and more resilient habitats, even in the face of wildfires. “NASA is interested in how satellite Earth observations can be used for natural resource management,” a member of the space agency’s Ecological Conservation Program tells Mongabay. A biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Wildlife, Cory Mosby knows the power of beavers. And now NASA — yes, the same agency that sends people into space and searches for killer comets — is helping researchers get a more detailed look at how beavers can transform our world for the better, including combating climate change.

The state of Alaska sued President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday seeking to block its decision to reverse a policy begun under his predecessor Donald Trump that had opened vast swaths of the Tongass National Forest, the largest such wilderness in the United States, to logging and mining. The state’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Anchorage, said the January decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to restore protections for 9.37 million acres (3.76 million hectares) of the southeastern Alaska forest undermines the state’s economy by prohibiting timber harvests and mining for essential minerals. The state’s lawsuit said the USDA decision was made without properly explaining its reasoning, in violation of federal law. The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Alaska said the protections reduce state tax revenues, increase the need for state expenditures on remote communities near the forest and prevent economic development.

A month after the Custer Gallatin National Forest supervisor approved a 15-year, 39,909-acre logging project near the western border of Yellowstone National Park, three conservation groups have filed notice they intend to sue to halt the work. The Center for Biological Diversity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Council on Wildlife and Fish filed the notice with the Department of Interior, Custer Gallatin National Forest and Fish and Wildlife Service on Sept. 6. In a 10-page letter, the groups argue the work is a violation of the Endangered Species Act. The groups contend the Forest Service failed to properly analyze the project’s effects on grizzly bears and lynx, harming their habitat. Both animals are listed as endangered species. …The logging, first outlined three years ago, is meant to reduce wildfire risk around the community of West Yellowstone, improve the diversity of habitat and also supply regional sawmills with lumber.

Lightning strikes sparked three more wildfires in the last week: one near Springerville, one North of Forest Lakes and one near Young. Last week the Valentine Fire had grown quickly… But the 154 firefighters who scrambled to respond weren’t putting it out; they were putting it to work. Crews have also opted to confine the low-intensity Labor Fire on the Black Mesa Ranger District to allow it to consume brush, grass and downed and dead wood. …The return of thunderstorms and rain this week means crews use backfires to contain the fire in an area of about 4,000 acres, reducing the risk of future, high-intensity fires. …We’ll have to figure out how to live with fire… That’s the only way to restore the fire-adapted ecosystem unbalanced by a century of logging, cattle grazing and fire suppression. But one hopeful study has demonstrated that thinning and managed fires work.

WASHINGTON STATE — U.S. Rep Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, co-introduced a piece of legislation that would boost job training programs in the forestry and timber industries. The Jobs in the Woods Act comes in the wake of the labor shortage in the forestry industry and related fields. If passed, the bill would create a grant program for nonprofits, state governments and colleges to use on forestry workforce training programs. “The only way we’ll keep the woods working for future generations is if we provide the next generation a pathway to pursue careers in forestry,” Perez said. “This bipartisan bill will make that possible and connect people to careers in this critical field that is essential to Southwest Washington.” …In recent years, labor shortages in the timber industry have harmed the growth of forestry and manufacturing.