Region Archives: US West

When a horse dies in the Wyoming backcountry, sometimes the best way to keep it from attracting grizzly bears is using explosives to blow the carcass into tiny pieces. In fact, the U.S. Forest Service even has a how-to instruction guide how to best do that, titled “Obliterating Animal Carcasses With Explosives.” But it’s so hot and dry right now, the Forest Service can’t explode the carcasses of two horses that slipped and tumbled to their deaths Friday on a remote trail near Cody out of fear that the blasts would ignite a wildfire. …the reasoning behind exploding carcasses is brutally simple. …If the blasting goes well, the carcass is completely disintegrated, Crosby Davidson, a Forest Service regional blast expert, told Cowboy State Daily. “Later, you might find a bear licking the dirt, but there’s nothing for him to defend, so he behaves differently than if there’s a whole carcass.”

To understand the controversy around cutting Washington’s older trees, you have to get to know an economic supply line, from tree to timber to cash. There are the trees and forests themselves, then the timber cruisers and surveyors, the loggers, the millworkers, the timber town residents, the local beneficiaries of timber sales, from hospitals to libraries, the county commissioners and other officials — and the logging opponents. …We met the employees at the Washington Department of Natural Resources who lay out a sale, as well as loggers cutting trees so big on slopes so steep that some of the logging equipment was chained to a bulldozer to keep it from toppling downhill. Then we went out with opponents ripping down timber sale boundary markers to foil the sale of a forest on the Olympic Peninsula.

…Republicans in the U.S. House – including Oregon’s two Republican representatives – are hoping Congress will pass a bill before year’s end that would tackle increasingly large wildfires in the West by scaling back environmental regulations to make it easier to log and cut vegetation in federal forests… the “Fix Our Forests Act” passed the U.S. House on Sept. 24… It is expected to get a vote in the U.S. Senate after the November general election… Proponents say the bill would restore forest health, increase resiliency to catastrophic wildfires and protect communities by expediting environmental analyses while reducing frivolous lawsuits and step up restoration projects. But opponents, including environmentalists and Democrats, say it would open millions of acres of federal land to logging without scientific review or community input, potentially increasing the risk of wildfires while rolling back regulations to protect endangered and threatened species.

PHOENIX – Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Dr. Homer Wilkes and Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed a Shared Stewardship Agreement to strengthen collaboration between state and federal land management agencies in the State of Arizona. The State of Arizona and the USDA Forest Service have a long and successful record of collaborating on efforts to improve forest health and resilience. Today’s agreement focuses on federal and state agencies working together to respond to land management challenges and concerns across Arizona forests. Today’s agreement builds on a 2020 Shared Stewardship Memorandum of Understanding, aimed at accelerating the pace and scale of projects like the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI), and will assist the state and the Forest Service in their continued efforts to address the wildfire crisis in Arizona’s high priority “firesheds ” using funding from the Biden-Harris Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.

Oregon state officials today released records that shed some light on the abrupt suspension of the second-ranking official at the Oregon Department of Forestry, deputy state forester Mike Shaw. WW first reported in August that the agency had placed Shaw on leave during the height of the largest wildfire season in Oregon history. …On Aug. 6, Shaw’s boss, Cal Mukumoto, the state forester, sent DAS director Berri Leslie an email with the subject line “ODF sensitive issue.” …The alleged misconduct is not specified in Mukumoto’s letter, but other emails that show a series of emails from a former female Department of Forestry diversity, equity and inclusion official expressing frustration that Shaw had excluded her from what the agency calls “leadership team” meetings. …On Oct. 10, The Oregonian reported a story on ODF that appears related.

Americans visit hiking and camping areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service more than 150 million times each year. …Due to a looming budget cut, the agency will not be hiring seasonal staff for the next fiscal year, leaving thousands of people out of work and putting essential conservation and biodiversity work at risk. …The spending bill that recently passed the U.S House of Representatives gave the agency around half a billion dollars less than it requested, meaning that the Forest Service faces a large budget cut. Most of the other environmental and science-based federal agencies also face large cuts. Meanwhile, the money that the agency received from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s signature climate law, has already been spent. …This decision does not apply to the more than 11,000 temporary firefighting positions that the Forest Service hires every year.

SACRAMENTO – California unveiled newly updated, first-of-their-kind dashboards that will help Californians track the state’s wildfire prevention work. Along with these new tools, state officials announced that 700,000 acres of land were treated for wildfire resilience in 2023, and that prescribed fire more than doubled between 2021 and 2023. For the first time, all fuels management projects are being tracked in one place, on one map, delivering valuable information for project planning and wildfire response. The updated Interagency Treatment Dashboard, led by the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, now covers data from 2021 to 2023, showing the acres of completed wildfire resilience (or “treatments”) work. …CAL FIRE also launched the Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Dashboard, which tracks how wildfire prevention projects have helped shield communities and landscapes from wildfires.

In March 1989, environmental activists from Earth First! chained themselves to trees and buried themselves under rocks, unsuccessfully preventing the North Roaring Devil timber sale in Breintenbush Hot Springs, Oregon. Dubbed the “Easter Massacre,” it ignited the Timber Wars, a years-long slew of protests, academic disputes and legal battles fixated on protecting mature, old-growth forests and the endangered northern spotted owl, ultimately culminating in the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). Passed in 1994, the NWFP is a land management strategy that governs more than 24 million acres of federal forests across Oregon, Washington and Northern California — balancing conservation and ecological resilience with a logging economy that many small, rural communities depend on. Now, it’s getting amended, and much has changed over the past three decades. …The USFS intends to release its draft plan on Nov. 6. While the agency isn’t required to adopt any of the FAC’s recommendations, incorporating just some may reshape how the Northwest’s forests are managed.

DARRINGTON, Washington – Locals are being tapped to collect pine cones in an effort to store seeds to re-grow forests before wildfires destroy natural seed banks in the Pacific Northwest. This fall, cone collectors hit mountainous locations in search of fresh pine cones around Darrington. …Collecting cones for cash is hardly new, though, there is more attention on the work than ever before as concerns grow with larger, more destructive wildfires along the West Coast. In Darrington, a non-profit called Glacier Peak Institute acts as the middleman between Mast Reforestation and Silvaseed, the end-users of the seeds being collected today. …Kea Woodruff, Silvaseed’s general manager, “Under whatever future scenarios happen in the landscape, we had the seed we’re collecting that captures all that range of diversity so we can put trees back into the landscape in the future.”

Fire has always played a significant role in Pacific Northwest forests. Fire in the Cascades, historically sparked by lightning strikes, led to a natural succession that cleared debris on the forest floor, eliminated old and weaker individual trees, provided room for new plant growth, and, in the case of ponderosa pines, induced germination. …Yet today, due to several factors, the historical “fire season” has been replaced with the “fire year.” “Climate change has had a dramatic impact on the forest,” says George Geissler, deputy supervisor over Fire Management at the Department of Natural Resources. …As Washington state’s forester, Geissler is charged with maintaining healthy forests across the state. He says the region’s diverse environments require specific management techniques, noting that the dry eastern foothills of the Cascades are significantly different from the “almost tropical” forests of the Olympic Peninsula.

ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — The Orange County Fire Authority and U.S. Forest Service are battling over accusations that USFS policies grounded an elite aerial unit during major fires and left the Cleveland National Forest susceptible to the recent Airport blaze that torched 23,526 acres. Southern California congressional members want answers from Forest Service officials. One point of contention involves the Southern California-based Quick Reaction Force, a squad of night-flying, converted military helicopters that can drop 3,000 gallons of water and fire retardant. The force’s operators, led by Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy, allege the USFS at times grounded the team during one of the busiest fire seasons in recent history. …The crux of the issue: for the last four years, U.S. Forest Service policy has required that all aerial supervisors …must be government employees … they must work for a government agency. This policy applies only to fires in national wildlands or using USFS resources.

BOISE, Idaho — …the Wapiti Fire that tore across the steep terrain of the Boise National Forest … was a fitting example of this year’s Idaho fire season, which has left officials scrambling to keep up. Wildfires are striking more frequently and with greater intensity across the United States, a trend that will continue without action to address climate change. According to Josh Harvey, chief of fire management for the state Department of Lands, Idaho has had 318 fires this year, which have collectively burned 53,765 acres. Of those, 133 were caused by humans, while 119 were sparked by lightning. Another 66 are still under investigation. …The wildfire threat is increasing for several reasons, Harvey said, including population growth and more people moving into areas that used to be untouched. …Jen Pierce, an associate professor of geosciences at Boise State University, noted how climate change is reshaping fire seasons across the United States. Idaho is no exception.

Cecilia Greco

As climate change heightens wildfire activity and extends the wildfire season, it is imperative to implement commonsense, responsible methods of active forest management to control and mitigate wildfires. …With six out of the last seven years being the planet’s most intense wildfire seasons on record, active forest management is vital in mitigating the effects of fires and preventing future fires from spreading uncontrollably. …active forest management cannot be implemented unless bureaucratic red tape is cut and environmental review processes are reformed. …Active forest management involves using time-tested and systematic techniques to reduce the occurrence of wildfires. …To go from fire mismanagement to active management, two members of the House Committee on Natural Resources have proposed the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act. The act aims to streamline the environmental review process for efficient approval of forest management projects, ensuring they are timely and cost-effective.

Megan McKinnie

Megan McKinnie [was a] smokejumper, parachuting out of planes to fight wildfires for the U.S. Forest Service until she found out she was pregnant with twins. Today, McKinnie coordinates the flights at a nearby tanker base that drop retardant onto wildfires, while juggling her family. “I saw a lot of women that started families and ended up leaving the agency,” McKinnie says. Data collected by the Forest Service shows that most women firefighters leave the field six or seven years in, when many begin having kids. …McKinnie is part of the Forest Service’s new Women in Wildland Fire Advisory Council, formed to encourage more women to stay in the profession. Jamey Toland created the council almost a year ago, that includes 22 women across the country. They’re looking at solutions like daycares at Forest Service facilities, changing the agency’s pregnancy and postpartum fitness requirements for firefighters, and building all-women training camps.

The Oregon Department of Forestry investigates the cause of every fire it responds to and if someone is found to have been negligent or malicious in starting or spreading a significant fire, the agency pursues reimbursement for its firefighting costs. The agency has not been very successful in recouping those costs, according to a report discussed by the Emergency Fire Cost Committee. The account offered a rare glimpse into the scale of the costs and the efforts to recover them. But it only represented a snapshot of the problem, excluding a full list of all the fires the state is investigating or pursuing for reimbursement said forestry spokesperson, Jessica Neujahr. …The report showed the forestry department spent at least $24 million to respond to 36 significant fires caused or spread negligently or maliciously by people or groups since 2004, and that in pursuing reimbursement, it has collected just $86,000 from “responsible parties.”

Conservation advocates are prepared to sue over more than half of the timber sales Washington’s Board of Natural Resources approved on Tuesday, the latest flare-up in the fight over whether older trees on state-owned forestland should be spared from logging. The board approved a package of nine sales that would involve cutting roughly 1,200 acres of trees across western Washington, with minimum revenue expected to be around $13.8 million. Staff at the Department of Natural Resources put together plans for the sales and money generated would go largely to schools, counties, and public universities. Tacoma-based Legacy Forest Defense Coalition opposed five of the nine sales… “We’re probably going to appeal every single one”.

BOISE, Idaho — On Aug. 30, Idaho Forest Group and Kaniksu Land Trust put pen to paper to protect nearly 2,000 acres of North Idaho wilderness forever. In the deal, Idaho Forest Group donated the development rights for land along Prichard Creek, a tributary of the Coeur d’Alene River, to ensure the land is conserved for generations to come. “It’s a big deal,” said Regan Plumb, Kaniksu Land Trust conservation director. “To be able to protect almost an entire watershed and make sure that this stream is safe forever is really unique.” The agreement was conceived four years ago when Idaho Forest Group approached Kaniksu about gifting an easement for the area. Now, after years of paperwork and approvals, Kaniksu safeguards the right to develop or significantly subdivide the land — a privilege valued at $3 million.

As the gap between burned areas and replanting widens year after year, scientists see big challenges beyond where to put seedlings. The U.S. currently lacks the ability to collect enough seeds from living trees and the nursery capacity to grow seedlings for replanting on a scale anywhere close to stemming accelerating losses, researchers say. It also doesn’t have enough trained workers to plant and monitor trees. The Forest Service said the biggest roadblock to replanting on public land is completing environmental and cultural assessments and preparing severely burned areas so they’re safe to plant. That can take years — while more forests are lost to fire… 

After over a century of policies that prioritized fire suppression, unhealthy and overgrown forests are widespread across Eastern Washington. When a wildfire sweeps through these forests, which historically would experience periodic fires, they burn to a crisp because of decades of accumulated leaves, pine needles, shrubs and younger trees in the understory. Nevertheless, barriers and questions remain. Prescribed fire, an essential step in making forests more resilient to wildfire, has been thwarted by workforce shortages and regulatory roadblocks. Hundreds of thousands to millions of acres still need some kind of intervention to be restored to health… Forest resiliency scientists argue the treatments—if done at scale—have the potential to fundamentally change fire behavior in the state.

Major Alaska resource projects, and the land they could be built on, may be at stake in the presidential election. They include drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and elsewhere in Alaska, logging in the Tongass National Forest, and cutting a 200-mile road through Alaska wilderness to access the Ambler mining district… Trump could attempt to again repeal the Roadless Rule in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to open up logging potential, undoing Biden’s reversal. But procedures and timelines may not leave much time for timber sales… More consequential for Alaska will be the next president’s position on climate change… If Harris wins, she’s expected to build on Biden policies that in Alaska support renewable energy and related efforts.