Region Archives: US West

Pointing to evidence that an isolated population of grizzly bears in northwest Montana has failed to meet its recovery goals, a conservation group is suing the Kootenai National Forest over its 95,000-acre Black Ram logging project in the Yaak Valley north of Troy. The logging project has been beset by controversy since it was first proposed in July 2018, with high-profile conservation figures… arguing … it lacks effective safeguards to protect the region’s fragile grizzly population in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, which includes a federally designated grizzly bear recovery zone. …On Jan. 6, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Native Ecosystems Council formally challenged the project, filing their lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in federal court in Missoula. The lawsuit also names as defendants Keith Lannom, deputy regional forester for the USFS’ northern region; Chad Benson, the forest supervisor for the Kootenai National Forest; and Kirsten Kaiser, district ranger for the Kootenai National Forest.

A statewide survey last month indicates Oregonians overall have a practical but measured attitude toward timber harvests and other forest management practices. A sizable percentage believe there is too much logging in Oregon forests, but the vast majority believe commercial timber harvest plays a role in actively managing healthy forests.  …As always when considering forest management, broad generalities — “too much” logging vs. “too little,” for instance — don’t reflect the reality of what is actually taking place.  …Although very little logging occurs on federal forest lands, there is a longstanding debate over some of that federal land.    …The irony here is that both sides want the same thing: healthier, more fire-resilient forests.   An Oregon State University fire researcher told Jefferson Public Radio that the BLM’s Medford District and the environmental group KS Wild “should be in some sort of couples therapy.”

Additional coverage: Oregon Values and Beliefs Center Survey: Oregonians’ opinions about forest practices to maintain Oregon’s forests for environmental quality and/or economic benefits.

Some ponderosa pines are prey to bark beetles and others to mistletoe — but generally not both. And we don’t know why. Ponderosa pine forests probably wouldn’t exist without Abert’s squirrels — which apparently inherit a preference for the chemistry of the tissues of individual trees. But we don’t know why. Fires in the fall do more damage to the ponderosa pine roots and the fungi that help the trees survive than fires in the spring. But we’re not sure why. …But one thing is clear: We’ve mucked up 6 million acres of ponderosa pine forest in northern Arizona something awful. And now only sustained restoration followed by the return of frequent, natural, low-intensity ground fires can prevent an ecological disaster… That’s the conclusion of a fascinating summary of studies on forest restoration in northern Arizona’s beleaguered ponderosa pine forests, written by researchers from Northern Arizona University and published in the journal Ecology and Society.

Whitebark pines are unmistakable… But by 2016, over half of those still standing were husks of their former selves… The trees are fighting an uphill battle. The invasive blister rust fungus, mountain pine beetle infestations, changing wildfire patterns and climate change all threaten this keystone species. It was officially listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2022. …It’s been a candidate for protection since 2011 and was listed as endangered in Canada in 2012, but other higher priority species got the focus in the U.S. for years. Listing means new money and formalized safeguards. …The national whitebark pine restoration plan, which develops priority areas for restoration, is led by the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation and American Forests in consultation with the Forest Service, along with other federal land management agencies and tribal nations. 

Two fires set by federal agencies last year meant to reduce hazardous fuels ultimately grew out of control and led to the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. This week, Sen. Ron Griggs, a Republican from Alamogordo, prefiled legislation aimed at making these types of government-managed burns illegal from the beginning of March to the end of May each year.  Private landowners would still be allowed to conduct burns on their property under certain circumstances. The proposed bill would allow private landowners to light prescribed burns on their land unless a state forest official, county or municipality has issued fire restrictions due to drought conditions. The bill also details that any prescribed burn conducted by private landowners must be undertaken with precautionary measures — sufficient personnel and equipment, notification of local fire officials, burn and contingency plans, and techniques “that cause the fire to be confined to a predetermined area.”

An environmental group is asking Forest Grove to reconsider logging practices in its watershed. The city owns over 4,000 acres some 7 miles outside town and contracts a forestry service to cut and sell logs. Since 2002, around two-thirds of the property has been actively thinned and replanted, according to Barry Sims, who manages the forest for contractor Trout Mountain Forestry. “Because the trees are generally 80 to 100 years old, they’re very high-quality, so there is a lot of good opportunity for selling those logs and return a pretty good price to the city,” Sims told the Forest Grove City Council at a December meeting. In 2022, net revenue from the logs was $1,014,540. However, the nonprofit Treekeepers of Washington County says those 100-year-old trees are much more valuable alive than they are as timber, storing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than recently planted trees.

Ron Buentemeier

When Ron Buentemeier started working in the woods in the early 1960s, there were at least nine lumber mills running in the Flathead Valley. In the list was F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co., where Buentemeier was hired as a forester in 1962. Six decades later, most of those mills have closed or have been sold, but F.H. Stoltze survives, turning logs into lumber at the same spot it has been for a century, at its mill off Half Moon Road west of Columbia Falls. In that time, the logging industry in western Montana and the broader Pacific Northwest has changed dramatically. The simple act of how loggers cut trees has changed… But perhaps the biggest change of all is the size of the industry. Today, F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. is one of only two sawmills remaining in the Flathead Valley and the oldest family-owned and operated private timber company in Montana.

The U.S. Forest Service is taking another look at a controversial timber project near McKenzie Bridge in a move that could limit the cutting of mature and old-growth trees following pressure on the Biden administration. Regional Forester Glenn Casamassa on Thursday withdrew the agency’s decision on the Flat Country Project, which proposed a mixture of logging and forest management on 4,500 acres of Willamette National Forest east of Eugene. The withdrawal was sparked by a Biden administration directive to conserve old and mature forest as a way to keep carbon in trees as part of its fight against climate change. …Forest Service officials said a panel of experts reviewing the project found “even though the project complied with the Northwest Forest Plan, some parts of it may be incongruent with recent directives and climate-related plans concerning conservation of mature and old-growth forests and carbon stewardship,” agency spokesman Jon McMillan said.

FOREST GROVE, Oregon — Oregon agriculture officials have adopted a temporary quarantine to slow the spread of emerald ash borer, a highly destructive forest pest that has killed hundreds of millions of native ash trees in North America. The quarantine limits the movement of ash, olive and white fringe tree material from Washington County, where the insect was found in late June in several ash trees at a middle school parking lot in Forest Grove, about 25 miles west of Portland. Native to Asia, the emerald ash borer first arrived in the U.S. in 2002, near Detroit, Mich. Since then, it has spread across 30 states and Canada. The discovery earlier this year in Oregon marked the first sighting on the West Coast. …So far, emerald ash borer has only been found in several ash trees in Forest Grove, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

GAZELLE, Calif.– A new tree nursery will soon be coming to Siskiyou County to help forests, damaged by wildfires, get back to what they used to be. The state-of-the-art 25-million seedling per-year tree nursery in Gazelle will begin construction next year, bringing 20 new greenhouses to the area and more than 50 by 2026 when construction is expected to be completed. It will also focus on the production of native conifer seedlings for forest restoration, research, and conservation projects. …Since 2018, CAL FIRE reports show that more than nine million acres have been damaged by wildfires across the state, with more than two million of those acres needing reforestation assistance. …The new tree nursery will also help bring 15 new jobs to the county, as well as other opportunities for work, including new research on seedling production. Once SPI has helped Californian forests, their hope is to extend their seedlings to other states, including Oregon.

In California, a state that’s grown accustomed to months of smoky skies, mass evacuations and the ever-present fear of wildfire, 2022 felt unusual. Summer came and went, the weather warmed and the hillsides yellowed across the state, while residents held their breath. But a giant blaze or siege of simultaneous infernos – the events that have defined recent fire seasons – failed to appear. By the time November rains brought relief to the drought-stricken landscape, slightly more than 360,000 acres had burned. That’s a strikingly low number, compared with the 2.2m that burned on average annually in California during the past five years, and only a fraction of the record 2020 season when more than 4.2m acres burned. …But even with smaller numbers, the state wasn’t spared. Fires may have been comparatively smaller than previous years, but some still burned fiercely, leaving devastation in their wake. 

The North Cascades Conservation Council (NCCC) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service over the Twisp Restoration Project (TRP), alleging that the Forest Service failed to give the public adequate opportunity to comment…. The lawsuit also contends that the agency didn’t consider multiple alternatives, and analyze all potential impacts of the TRP in violation of federal laws. It also contends that the TRP uses a management approach that “allows logging contractors to remove trees at will under vague guidelines.” Although the Forest Service held an initial comment period on the TRP in 2020, the agency significantly changed the project after much of the area burned in the 2021 Cedar Creek Fire. After the fire, the Forest Service reduced the TRP area by 69% to exclude areas affected by the fire. But they didn’t allow the public to weigh in on the potential impacts of the revised TRP, according to the lawsuit.

Flying over Oregon’s woodlands, tree health specialist Danny DePinte was stunned by what he saw: a stretch of dead fir that seemed to go on and on.  “As we continued to fly along, it just kept going. It didn’t stop for miles and miles,” DePinte, who conducts research in the Pacific Northwest region for the U.S. Forest Service, told NPR.  Since 1947, the U.S. has been conducting annual aerial surveys across the country to monitor the health of trees. Flying up to 2,000 feet in the air, observers scan terrain in a grid-like pattern, analyzing about 30 acres per second, DePinte said. With a tablet, a pen and a trained eye, they are able to spot and diagnose unhealthy trees based on their color, posture and fullness.  …Preliminary figures indicate that 1.1 million acres showed fir trees with some signs of dying — almost double the previous all-time high for the state since the survey began 75 years ago. 

Oregon is on its way to creating North America’s largest research forest, following Tuesday’s decision by top state officials to separate the Elliott State Forest in southwest Oregon from its obligation to fund schools and designate the land as a place for scientific discovery.  The State Land Board voted unanimously Tuesday to create the 80,000-acre Elliott State Research Forest, signaling an end to a years-long debate over how to manage a state forest in southwest Oregon that was failing to generate revenue for public education. …The Elliott provides habitat to dwindling wildlife populations, including salmon, the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet. Oregon political leaders have been struggling for decades to find a way for the forest to comply with wildlife protection requirements while continuing to meet a legal obligation to generate revenue for public schools.

MONTANA — The U.S. Forest Service is trying to pull a fast one on the public by putting forward a significant proposal that would negatively impact our public lands, public access and public opportunities. All the while private interests would get exactly what they want. The USFS recently put forth the proposed “East Crazy Inspiration Divide Land Exchange.” The proposal is complex and convoluted, intertwining what should be a simple land exchange in the Yellowstone Club’s Big Sky-area property with a very complex land exchange in the east Crazy Mountains. Turns out, the Custer-Gallatin National Forest refused to entertain a land exchange involving the Yellowstone Club property unless the Yellowstone Club used the weight of its money to “solve public access” in the Crazies. Now we have two very different, otherwise unrelated land exchanges, and the public must choose to reject both or accept both with no alternatives offered.

A state forest with some of the last and largest swathes of old-growth trees in the Oregon Coast Range will no longer be logged to help pay for the public schools.  A vote from the State Land Board made the decision official Wednesday, following Legislative approval in February. The Elliott State Forest, now the Elliott State Research Forest, will be overseen by a new government agency in partnership with Oregon State University. It will be studied for long-term management and habitat and conservation practices. Some private logging will still be allowed. The State Land Board — made up of Gov. Kate Brown, Secretary of State Shemia Fagan and State Treasurer Tobias Read — Brown also appointed a nine-person board to help with the creation of the agency that will oversee the forest. That agency will be called the Elliott State Research Forest Authority.