The U.S. Interior Department announced Wednesday a $1.5 billion plan to implement what it says is a more strategic and cohesive approach to wildland fire management. Interior says its five-year investment in wildfire resilience will help bolster communities and ecosystems against the mounting threat of wildfires. The announcement, posted on the agency’s website Wednesday, says the funding comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed last year by President Joe Biden. It represents an average increase of about 30% over last year’s funding for the Department’s wildfire management efforts. The agency says the funding will be used for fuels management, post-fire restoration and fire science. The new plan also includes pay increases and training of additional firefighters and development of programs that “support firefighter mental health and well being.”
DeQuincy, LA – The first loads of lumber went out for sale Wednesday, Feb. 9 from Dequincy’s lumber mill under the mill’s new ownership. In May of 2020, Georgia Pacific announced they’d be idling the mill, causing nearly 200 employees to be laid off, but in July of 2021, Interfor became the new owners of the Dequincy Lumber Mill. Truckloads of lumber rolled out as the first of Interfor’s production, and the company celebrated and held a ribbon-cutting to commemorate the event. “We have reached this moment in time where we celebrate the fruits of our labor,” Marty Rector, mill manager, said. …Since the mill has come back under the new company, over 125 jobs have been brought back to the area – with many of the employees being rehired to work at the same facility that was previously owned by Georgia Pacific.
State officials have filed a lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric Co., seeking reimbursement for nearly $33 million in costs to fight the 2020 Zogg Fire, which in 2020 killed four people and destroyed 207 buildings in Shasta and Tehama counties. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has calculated down to the penny its suppression, accounting, investigation, administrative and collection costs related to the fire, according to the lawsuit filed in Shasta County Superior Court earlier this month. …Cal Fire says a tree fell onto electrical lines along Zogg Mine Road in western Shasta County, sparking the blaze in September 2020. While the electricity had been shut off in some other areas in the county, in an effort to prevent fires being started by trees and limbs being blown by the wind into electrical lines, the power remained on in the area where the Zogg Fire started.
Groups that have long been at odds on forest management issues have reached a consensus on … how the U.S. Forest Service drafts land management plans on three national forests in Northeastern Oregon and Southeastern Washington. [The] access subcommittee of the Blue Mountains Intergovernmental Council (BIC) submitted its final rule and desired conditions to the full council. The Forest Service formed the BIC, made up of county officials, tribal members and other stakeholders … after the agency’s proposed 2018 management plan revision fizzled in the face of intense public scrutiny. The three national forests covered by the management plan … make up a third of Oregon’s national forest land. … [The] desired conditions will form a foundation for the broader guidelines surrounding key issues such as forest access, elk security, forest health and grazing when the Forest Service begins the process of revising its management plan for the Blue Mountain Forest.
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — Throughout the last few years, we’ve witnessed firsthand the devastation that wildfires can do in this country. However, when the fires aren’t active, there are people on the ground researching and studying ways to restore our forests, but also prevent devastation. Now, that information will be shared through a federal database based in New Mexico. Alan Barton, the director of the Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, says fires are meant to burn, but not in this destructive manner. …Years of fire suppression efforts have impacted the way our forests operate. Now, the federal government is getting involved, setting aside $3 billion in January to help contain these fires. Some of that money will go towards a national database, overseen by The New Mexico Forestry Institute. …Now, it will be expanded to include information and research from 49 other states. 
Recently the Biden administration announced it will spend billions of dollars on logging forests to preclude or slow the spread of large wildfires. One of the arguments alleged by proponents of thinning or logging forests is that it would preclude wildfires and reduce carbon emissions from wildfire. Proponents argue that more trees survive a fire if there has been “active forest management.” The problem with such ebullient pronouncements is that they fail to provide a full accounting of the carbon losses and emissions. A number of studies that reviewed carbon emissions conclude that logging and wood processing emits far more carbon than a fire. …In fact, one estimate suggests that it may take 100 years to replace the carbon loss resulting from forest management. …If you are running in the wrong direction, running faster doesn’t do you any good The best management for our forests and climate is to stop logging our public forests.
LOS ANGELES — Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) and bill co-sponsors announced the reintroduction of Assembly Bill (AB) 1979, The California Deforestation-Free Procurement Act. “AB 1979 will expand California’s leadership on addressing climate change, protecting biodiversity, respecting Indigenous rights, and responding to the environmental emergency that is tropical deforestation,” said Assemblymember Kalra. “I remain committed to enacting a policy that ensures our state purchases and contracts do not inadvertently contribute to this global crisis and in doing so we can encourage more transparency and sustainable practices throughout global markets.” …If passed, all California state contracts involving commodities that put tropical forests at risk, such as palm oil, soy, cattle, rubber, paper/pulp and timber, would require contractors to maintain a “forest policy” and provide evidence that their operations in sensitive tropical regions are not linked to forest destruction and degradation or abuses of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. 
Less than a year after Washington state committed $328 million toward reducing the impacts of climate-charged catastrophic wildfire and improving forest health, the U.S. Forest Service announced a plan liable to supercharge that effort. A 
Only the Government can turn a billion dollar asset into ashes and make your kids the victims of that loss. Oregon created the Elliott State forest 92 years ago with a promise that income from logging would fund the public schools. Now, Governor Kate Brown has plans to kill that income and burn the forest to the ground…no kidding. No logging has been allowed in the forest for years thanks to liberal democrat tree huggers in Salem. They strapped the forest with so many rules that the estimated billion dollar value is barely one fifth of that today. … No one wants to own it, even for a dollar, because the current greenie rules guarantee this billion dollar asset loses millions of dollars. … This year’s election decides whether the Elliott turns back into a healthy growing forest…
The yearslong saga over the fate of Oregon’s Elliott State Forest may soon come to a close. During this year’s short legislative session, Oregon state lawmakers are considering a 
Conservation groups from across the nation today called on the Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ) to end an emerging practice by the Forest Service that upends the bedrock environmental law requiring agencies to “look before they leap” when making decisions that could harm the environment. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), agencies must analyze and disclose to the public the impacts to individual streams, hillsides, forest stands, habitats, and other values before approving logging and road building. In a letter signed by 94 organizations, the groups describe an unlawful but growing practice by the U.S. Forest Service … in which agencies put off evaluating or disclosing the “where,” “when,” and “how” of logging projects until long after the agency has approved them. This makes it impossible for the public or agency decision-makers to understand how our public lands will be affected until it’s too late.
Nearly half of Washington state is forested. That’s 22 million acres of Douglas firs, red alders, western hemlock, and ponderosa pine, to name a few. But as wildfires grow in size and regularity, those millions of acres are going up in flames. Normally, there’s an ecosystem of public and private tree nurseries that reseed our forests. But a seed shortage now threatens their future. …The Webster State Forest Nursery looks as you’d imagine it — acres of young tree seedlings poking through the mud, rows of greenhouses brimming with new forest life. …”We’re producing 8 to 9 million trees a year,” said nursery manager Brian Morris. …Nine million might sound like a big number, but as wildfires grow, it’s beginning to look smaller and smaller. 
Survivors of the 2020 Labor Day wildfires in Santiam Canyon cities reported breathing problems, health problems and struggles to find housing still impacted them a year after the fires, according to an Oregon State University community health study. Of the more than 100 residents of cities including Detroit, Gates, Lyons, Mill City and Idanha who participated in the survey from October to November, 55% reported having some or a lot of difficulty breathing, compared with 27% who reported they had breathing problems before the fires. Respondents to the survey reported they were still changing air filters in their houses every two weeks and that both they and their animals continue to experience health issues due to contamination from the fires.