Region Archives: US West

SALT LAKE CITY — The Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest is getting a massive amount of money to reduce the risk of wildfire. The USDA Forest Service is reportedly investing over $18 million over the next few years to clear out potential fuels at the ground level. Forestry officials said with the population rising and people living closer to the forests, the need to clear out this land is higher than ever. Families by the dozens made it to the campgrounds in Big Cottonwood Canyon. …The USDA added Uinta-Wasatch-Cache to its list of landscapes on the National Wildfire Crisis Strategy in early 2023, according to the forest’s website. This plan is aimed at protecting watersheds, recreational areas and wildlife by getting rid of fuels and upgrading fire safety measures in roughly 1.1 million acres of land in Utah, which includes about 868,000 acres of forest service land.

As my colleagues and I hiked through the Nelder giant sequoia grove south of Yosemite National Park recently, we could barely believe our eyes. In 2017, the Railroad fire swept through nearly all of the Nelder Grove, burning lightly in most areas but very intensely in the portion where we walked, about six years after the fire. The naturally regenerating giant sequoia forest was so vigorous and lush that, in many places, we had to pull the stems of young sequoias apart just so we could walk between them. There were hundreds of them on almost every acre — many of them already 8 or 9 feet tall. It was a remarkable sight because, in that particular location, the Railroad fire burned hot, killing trees, including about three dozen mature sequoias. This high-intensity fire patch is isolated; it’s nearly half a mile from the grove’s nearest remaining live, mature sequoias. 

…Ralph Zentz, city of Fort Collins assistant forester, said spruce trees are suffering from the spruce ips hunteri beetle, a native beetle found in the mountains that began invading the city a couple years ago. Zentz said the city is seeing the second big wave of the ips beetle in the last 40 years, resulting in the city identifying about 200 infected spruce trees. Why are spruce trees dying now despite all the moisture we had this spring? Zentz said drought, especially in 2021 when the city saw scant moisture August through the end of December, set the stage for the beetles to invade. He said a windy and dry summer and fall in 2021, coupled with people shutting off irrigation systems and not watering their spruce trees over the winter, allowed the insects to attack the stressed trees. Zentz said properly watered spruces push the beetles out when they tunnel into the bark.

Thanks to a successful court challenge by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, over 10,000 acres of grizzly bear habitat in northwestern Montana will not be decimated by commercial logging. In late June, our lawsuit in a federal district court in Montana halted a large-scale logging project in endangered grizzly bear habitat to protect the small, isolated, and imperiled Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear population from further harm. …The Court ruled the project is illegal because the government did not analyze the cumulative impacts on grizzly bears from concurrent logging and road-building on public lands, state lands, and private lands in the area. …The Court acknowledged that this population is “uniquely vulnerable,” and it found the government’s analysis “factually false” because the government “assumed, contrary to the evidence before them, that the non-federal lands do not provide habitat for grizzly bears. 

…some environmental groups are taking aim at a commercial fire retardant… Phos-Chek, that neon-pink goo that airplanes dump over wildfires, is a sticky slurry of ammonium phosphate designed to coat vegetation and other fuels to deprive advancing flames of oxygen. Fire authorities swear by the product, calling it indispensable. But critics argue that officials are overlooking the product’s ecological risks. Studies have shown the retardant can harm plants, fish and other species, including steelhead trout and Chinook salmon. It can also act as a fertilizer that grows more vegetation, which can later act as fuel for fires. “Fire retardant has more adverse effects on endangered species than any other thing the federal government does, and there’s not even a close second,” said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, an advocacy group that recently sued the U.S. Forest Service over its use of aerial retardant.

On Wednesday, the San Juan Citizens Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Forest Service for violating environmental laws in their approval of the Salter Timber Project, which would cut nearly 23,000 acres of timber in the San Juan National Forest. Public lands program manager at the San Juan Citizens Alliance John Rader said that the alliance sat down with the Forest Service to give feedback and “urge them to use the best available science and to adopt an alternative that protected large trees.” Rader stated that they were ignored at each step. “We can no longer sit back and watch as the San Juan National Forest continues to claim that its ‘restoration’ projects are anything other than destructive, old-style commercial logging meant to feed the timber industry,” Rader said. The project would cut “large, century-old ponderosa pine trees and threaten wildlife,” the news release said.

DOWNIEVILLE, California — Using chainsaws, heavy machinery and controlled burns, the Biden administration is trying to turn the tide on worsening wildfires in the U.S. West through a multi-billion dollar cleanup of forests choked with dead trees and undergrowth. Yet one year into what’s envisioned as a decade-long effort, federal land managers are scrambling to catch up after falling behind on several of their priority forests for thinning even as they exceeded goals elsewhere. …“As much money as we’re receiving, it’s not enough to take care of the problems that we are seeing, particularly across the West,” said Forest Service Chief Randy Moore. “This is an emergency situation in many places, and we are acting with a sense of urgency.” …The enormity of the task is evident in an aerial view of California’s Tahoe National Forest, where mountainsides are colored brown and gray with the vast number of trees killed by insects and drought.

OLYPIA, Washington — A group of activists locked themselves together inside the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) building in Olympia on Tuesday June 27, demanding an in-person meeting with Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz over timber sales. The group of five, comprising members of the Lorax Coalition and other forest advocacy groups, are challenging ongoing logging and timber sales in “legacy” forests — forests that were last logged before 1945 and have naturally regenerated — in Western Washington. Among the five are Whatcom County-based activists from the Bellingham Forest Defense calling attention to the recent Box of Rain and planned Brokedown Palace timber sales. …The group has seven demands, including an end to clearcuts of mature forests on public lands, inclusion of environmental justice advocates and tribal members in decision-making bodies, and an end to herbicide and pesticide spraying on recently-logged lands, among others.

A federal judge has ruled that the United States Forest Service failed to adequately analyze the effects of a large logging project on grizzly bears and lynx in northwestern Montana, and ordered the agency to complete more work, halting the project until those analyses are completed. Judge Dana L. Christensen upheld a federal magistrate’s order that halted the Ripley logging project in the Kootenai National Forest. The project slated about 25,000 acres for “treatment” or various logging activity, including new roads and the likely disturbance of grizzly bear habitat. Christensen said that the U.S. Forest Service had failed to consider several key items that federal law required, including properly analyzing the project’s impact on an imperiled group of grizzly bears. In the order, Christensen said that the agencies, including the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, had “failed to conduct a lawful cumulative effects analysis because they did not analyze state and private activities in the project area.” 

TAHOE NATIONAL FOREST — Part of a multi-billion dollar clean-up of forests is underway in Tahoe National Forest.  Officials say the thinning work is making a difference and will lessen wildfire dangers by the end of the year.  “We’re trying to reduce the threat of large-scale wildfires by reducing the number of trees across the national forests in the Western U.S.,” said Eli Ilano, a supervisor with the Tahoe National Forest.  The focus is clearing out dry vegetation and dead trees, which is a huge job.  “I think this work is incredibly urgent. I think the forests as we know them in California and across the West, they’re dying. They’re being destroyed through fire,” Ilano said. “They’re dying from drought, disease and insects — and like I said, they’re dying at a pace that we’re having trouble keeping up with.”

As a fire ecologist, I found it especially frustrating to read Kendall Cotton’s uninformed opinion piece about fire and forest management. Cotton’s column was entitled “Catastrophic wildfires threaten environment,” but those wildfires do precisely the opposite — they maintain a disturbance-dependent forest environment. First, the forests that surround us here in Montana (and certainly those across Canada) were born of, and are maintained by, severe fire, not by frequent low-severity understory fires. To say that out forests here in Montana are “…not adapted to the extreme fires we see today” is dead wrong. We live within a disturbance-dependent forest community that requires severe fire to initiate natural forest succession. No other kind of disturbance (including timber harvesting) can create the complete series of forest ages that severe fire creates. Second, we can live with severe fire while being safe at the same time. 

The key to reducing summertime wildfire smoke in the American West could entail a bit more smoke in springtime. According to a new study published this month in the journal Earth’s Future, Northern California and the western Cascades of Oregon and Washington produce most of the wildfire smoke in the West. The smoke generated by large fires in those areas constitutes most of the haze affecting both large population centers across the West. …Environmental justice communities often disproportionately bear the brunt of environmental hazards and are less equipped to address them, which leads to more negative health care outcomes than in other wealthier, whiter communities. The study suggests that strategic application of large prescribed burns — 1,000 acres or greater — in the areas most responsible for the West’s wildfire smoke could significantly reduce seasonal wildfire smoke in both the Pacific Coast source states and the rest of the West.

On Monday, the state of California rolled out a first-of-its-kind approach to curbing the state’s catastrophic wildfire problem by providing new protections for prescribed fire and cultural burning practitioners.  The $20 million allocated for the “Prescribed Fire Liability Claims Fund Pilot” will cover losses in the rare instance that a prescribed or cultural burn escapes control.  State Sen. Bill Dodd authored the 2022 bill (Senate Bill 926) that made this fund possible, continuing his many years of leadership on wildfire and prescribed fire-related legislation. Dodd formerly represented Lake County in the State Assembly.  “Prescribed fire is a cost-effective way to minimize the scope and severity of wildfires,” said Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa. “It’s a tool that has been used for millennia by Native American tribes and one that will continue to play a big role in wildfire prevention. The rollout of this fund is a big step toward keeping California communities safe.”  

A pair of environmental groups have filed suit in federal district court, alleging that the Buckskin Saddle Project violates federal laws that were designed to ensure healthy forests and protect wildlife.  Officials with the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council said they had no choice but to challenge the Buckskin Saddle Integrated Restoration Project. Located on the eastern side of Lake Pend Oreille in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, the project calls for 19,474 acres of logging — 13,005 acres of commercial logging and another 6,469 acres of noncommercial logging.  “The scope of the planned deforestation is absolutely stunning, but the real shocker is the sheer size of the clear-cuts the Forest Service has approved,” Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said.

Berkshire County, Massachusetts — Around 40 activists converged at October Mountain State Forest Saturday to protest the state’s proposal to open bids to private companies to log on hundreds of acres here of forestland. The Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation’s plan to cut trees on 343 acres of the 447-acre section of the state’s largest forest is billed by the agency as a way to “diversify the forest structure” to save it from disease and for “climate resiliency.” Leave the forests alone, protesters said. The state’s euphemistic language for “forest health” is propaganda and “greenwashing,” said activist Glen Ayers. The state, he said, is priming the area for current and future logging for private profit at the expense of taxpayers. The plan to chop down ash trees that might be prone to the emerald ash borer disease, for instance, is “preemptive logging,” said activist James Thornley.

DOLORES, Colo.— Forest advocates sued the U.S. Forest Service today for violating environmental laws when it approved a nearly 23,000-acre timber sale that would cut large, century-old ponderosa pine trees and threaten wildlife in southwestern Colorado’s San Juan National Forest. “We can no longer sit back and watch as the San Juan National Forest continues to claim that its ‘restoration’ projects are anything other than destructive, old-style commercial logging meant to feed the timber industry,” said John Rader, public lands program manager at the Durango-based San Juan Citizens Alliance. “We sat down with the Forest Service, wrote them comments and repeatedly urged them to use the best available science and to adopt an alternative that protected large trees, but they ignored us every step of the way. We’ve been forced to ask a federal court to uphold the law and protect the wildlife, recreation and natural values.”

An appeals court has decided that the Flathead National Forest management plan adequately addresses endangered species, now that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service updated its assessment of the plan. On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals filed a five-page memorandum in favor of the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, agreeing with federal district court Judge Donald Molloy that the Flathead National Forest properly considered public challenges to its 2018 Management Plan so the plan can stand. “Therefore, the Forest Service did not ignore any adverse impact of the (final environmental impact statement on grizzly bears and bull trout) and took ‘the requisite hard look’ at the environmental consequences of its actions, regardless whether Swan View agrees with its scientific conclusion,” the three-judge panel wrote.

Kurt Steele

Kurt Steele is leaving his position as supervisor of the Flathead National Forest for a post at the federal agency’s regional office in Missoula, U.S. Forest Service officials confirmed Monday. Steele, who became the Flathead Forest supervisor in February 2020, will be taking up a deputy directorship position in ecosystem planning, according to agency spokesperson Dan Hottle. …According to Tami MacKenzie, the Flathead Forest’s deputy supervisor, agency officials are determining the process to select Steele’s successor. Hottle cautioned it may take time to find a permanent replacement for Steele. Officials likely will fill the job on an interim basis in the meantime, he said. Steele oversaw the Flathead Forest during a three-and-a-half year stretch marked by contentious debates over use of the forest. Hottle said those dustups played no role in Steele’s departure.

The 2015 Cottonwood Environmental Law Center v U.S. Forest Service decision in the 9th Circuit Court represents a major step backwards for forest management in the western states and has proven detrimental to habitat, wildlife and people. Since the decision, there has been a bipartisan consensus that the new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) created by the court, only applicable in the western states, was incorrect. …Both Montana U.S. senators, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, support fixing the Cottonwood decision.   …However, the Cottonwood decision creates a never-ending loop where lawyers can slow down or stop projects that already completed ESA consultation each time there is a shred of new information, much of which is redundant or irrelevant but still used to stop the process. The result is management paralysis, resulting in degraded forest habitats and an increased risk of catastrophic wildfire. 

SAN FRANCISCO— In a legal victory, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today agreed to reconsider whether West Coast fishers in northern California and southern Oregon warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. Fishers are relatives of mink, otters and wolverines, and live in old-growth forests. The Service has until Aug. 21, 2025, to decide whether to protect them.“It’s great news that the Fish and Wildlife Service is reconsidering its refusal to protect the elusive Pacific fisher, but waiting more than two decades to provide these protections is indefensible,” said Brian Segee, endangered species legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These fierce, plush-furred forest weasels have few natural predators, but they’re no match for people logging and poisoning their old-growth habitat. Protecting them under the Endangered Species Act is more important now than ever.” 

Fire danger in the Willamette and Siuslaw national forests was upgraded from ‘low’ to ‘moderate’ June 7 due to an abnormally warm and dry early season, according to Forest Service officials. “From the coast to the Cascade mountains, there’s been little rainfall over the last month,” said Eric Miller, acting fire staff officer for the Northwest Oregon Interagency Fire Management Organization. “We’ve already had small fires on both National Forest-managed land and nearby state and private lands in northwest Oregon. Our fire crews and aviation resources stand ready, but we need the public’s help to decrease human-caused fire starts.”