Region Archives: US West

NEWBERG, Ore. — Following the destructive wildfires in 2020, state officials started looking to plant new trees to replace those that burned. Now the Oregon Department of Forestry has turned to an expert to make sure those new trees have the best chance of survival. Workers at the Oregon Department of Forestry spend a lot of their time keeping Oregon green, and one place they spend much of that time is at J.E. Schroeder Orchard in Saint Paul. ODF manages the property, but you could say Kevin Barnes is a key figure in making sure our forests continue to grow. He’s a grafting specialist and makes sure the trees in the orchard will be able to produce seeds for replanting in forests both in Oregon and across the Pacific Northwest.

PORTLAND, Oregon — The Oregon Department of Forestry says it is not sending crews to help with fires burning in western Canada. Dozens of fires in British Columbia and Alberta are labeled “out of control.” …While we haven’t seen any major fires in the Pacific Northwest, that could change in an instant, officials say. The Oregon Department of Forestry wants to make sure we’re ready when it happens. They are building a vision for Oregon’s forests. Right now, the Oregon Board of Forestry and the Department of Forestry are working together to put together a strategy to protect the state’s forests and the people who rely on them. …The plan includes funding wildfire resources, expanding the use of prescribed burns, and teaching more people about wildfire safety and prevention. The plan could be adopted in June, before heading to Governor Kotek’s desk.

ARIZONA — According to a release from the Coconino National Forest, Wolf Fire operations have resulted in the treatment of roughly 10,000 acres of land following a late April lightning strike on the Coconino National Forest’s Mogollon Rim Ranger District. Fire managers spent roughly one week conducting firing operations to reduce dead vegetation and hazardous fuels, restore critical nearby watersheds, improve wildlife habitat and lessen the future risk of catastrophic wildfire in the Clints Well area. Firing operations wrapped up in advance of predicted rains for Tuesday and Wednesday. The Northern Arizona Type 3 Incident Management Team, which has been managing the Wolf Fire since April 6, plans to transition management of the fire back to the Coconino National Forest on Wednesday.

A large logging project ended in an unusual way for many lawsuits involving logging, endangered species and federal agencies: It settled without years of litigation. Late last year, two conservation groups, Native Ecosystems Council and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed suit to halt a large logging project near Townsend, known as the “Middleman Project,” that they said hurt elk, grizzly bear and Canada lynx, the latter two of which are classified by the federal government as endangered species. …The project was originally slated as a 20-year project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and the Big Belt Mountain Range. …As part of the agreement, the Forest Service can continue with the “associated activities” in the Crouching Trout Timber sale. The service also agrees to limit prescribed burning to the “inventoried wilderness areas” of no more than 25% of any area.

Tina Kotek

Gov. Tina Kotek abruptly pulled back this week on a pair of nominations to the board that oversees Oregon forest policy, after blowback from environmental groups over one of her picks. Kotek had planned to tap two men for the state Board of Forestry who have often been on opposite sides of debates over how much of Oregon’s forests should be open to logging. One was Bob Van Dyk, a conservationist who formerly spent a dozen years with the Portland-based Wild Salmon Center. The other: Heath Curtiss, vice president of government affairs for Hampton Lumber. The dual appointment would have left the balance unchanged on a seven-member board that is closely scrutinized for where its volunteer members stand on forest issues. …The reason appears tied to a letter eight environmental groups sent to Kotek’s office on Tuesday, railing against the selection of Curtiss for the board.

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources released its annual Forest Health Highlights report on Wednesday following a 2023 aerial detection survey that mapped 517,000 acres of forests with some level of tree mortality, defoliation, or foliar diseases. …Though the 2023 Forest Health Highlights report documents the fewest acres affected as part of a complete survey since 2018, it also contains several concerning trends and new data points underscoring the forest health crisis in Washington. One of the most concerning datapoints comes courtesy of the Douglas-fir engraver. Scientists mapped 25,600 acres of tree damage attributed to this bark beetle – the largest amount recorded by an aerial survey in Washington since 1969 and nearly 20 percent more than the 20,300 acres observed in 2019. Douglas-fir engraver damage signatures such as dead tops and branch flagging…

Suzanne Simard

Fostering mutual respect with nature is the answer to saving forests and even solving the climate crisis, according to forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. “It comes down to what we do with this concept of reciprocity,” said Simard, crediting the practice to long-lasting indigenous traditions. “This idea of being … in kinship with the trees.” The 64-year-old spearheads a British Columbia-based forest restoration project and recently authored a book, “Finding the Mother Tree,” about forests forging communities of their own — both above and below the ground. “Every tree is linked to every other tree,” Simard said at a talk for University of California Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures earlier this month.  …Simard’s findings defied the age-old idea of survival of the fittest… “It’s created a whole bunch of controversy,” Simard said, referencing her 1997 publication that disrupted the world of science. “That upended this notion that plants are in it for themselves.” 

QUINCY, California — Last week local groups announced a lawsuit aimed at the United States Forest Service claiming that the agency’s project in Plumas County is increasing wildfire vulnerability among other accusations. The release refers to a “$650 million logging project” that would allegedly log and spread herbicide on about 133,000 acres of old-growth forest while not preparing an Environmental Impact Statement. The groups that issued the release are Feather River Action, the John Muir Project and the Plumas Forest Project. However, the Forest Service’s numbers vary dramatically from the claims made by those filing the suit. Plumas National Forest Public Information Officer Tamara Schmidt said that while the service cannot comment on the litigation itself, the project referred to is likely the Spirit R-Z Resource Service project. The project’s numbers don’t quite line up with the claims made in the suit.

Land management in the United States will need a paradigm shift to survive climate change and a legacy of mismanagement. A team experts from four tribes, 10 universities, the Forest Service and a handful of environmental firms across North America are calling for a “two-eyed seeing” approach to land management. This means genuine collaboration between Indigenous and Western governments. The policy recommendations were outlined in a report released April 10. The report was co-led by Oregon State University professors Cristina Eisenberg and Michael Paul Nelson, and fire ecologists Susan Prichard of the University of Washington and Paul Hessburg of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station. Forest management in the United States is at a crucial juncture, and agencies such as the Forest Service are more open to integrating Indigenous knowledge and practices of land stewardship. …In the Pacific Northwest, two-eyed seeing in part addresses misconceptions about fire and conservation. 

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – Above Matchless Court in the First Creek drainage, new technology is chipping away at the vegetation and trees ecologically, efficiently, and safely. Two remote-controlled BurnBots RCU75s showcased precision mastication Wednesday as part of a demonstration hosted at the Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation by the Tahoe Fund and regional partners including the North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District, Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, and the Martis Fund. “This thing can do 10 times what hand crews can do,” said BurnBot CEO Anukool Lakhina. “BurnBots mission is to make destructive wildfires a thing of the past.” …The $50,000 project will remove 75% of the vegetation on 22 acres in 2 to 3 days. This would have taken 1 hand crew or 20 firefighters 15 days. …BurnBot was created to complement human efforts and address the needed scale of fuels reduction and management, according to BurnBot’s website. 

CASPAR, California — With one exception, all the usual sounds of spring have returned to the Jackson Demonstration State Forest in Caspar. …But there is no sound of chainsaws and falling trees, and there is no chance of more tree-cutting for profit until 2025, possibly even later. A timber harvest plan that uses pre-burning and other environmentally favored techniques will be on the agenda of the Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) on May 8. Even if approved, that harvest would not begin before 2025. …The meeting will feature a new chairperson, Amy Wynn, and several members who have been reappointed. …The agenda includes a discussion of revamping the JAG charter, which could result in restructuring the JAG to solve the most vexing problem the advisory group faces, that of co-management. California Governor Gavin Newsom has pushed for Tribes to be part of managing the forest resources. 

Artificial intelligence tools are helping Oregon wildlife researchers study hard-to-reach threatened species like the marbled murrelet. Researchers with Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service collected millions of hours of audio from federal forests in Washington and Oregon between 2018 and 2022. “We cannot physically review all the audio data that we collect,” said OSU College of Forestry doctoral student Matthew Weldy. “So we are reliant on computational tools to filter this data set and find sounds of interest.” To comb through that colossal amount of data, Weldy and other researchers developed a machine learning algorithm to identify the call patterns of marbled murrelets. Their findings — published this month in the Ecological Indicators journal — could help biologists understand which areas are most important to these enigmatic seabirds, thereby improving habitat conservation efforts.

Bob Longatti

The management of cherished US forest lands has been mired in a complex web of regulations and legal battles, often driven by well-intentioned but misguided efforts to protect endangered species. It’s time to address this issue by amending the Endangered Species Act to prevent litigious groups from unnecessarily delaying or canceling vital forest management plans. …Citizens for Sensible Forest Management, a nonpartisan citizens group formed during the Creek Fire, has partnered with the Property and Environment Research Center of Montana. Research conducted by PERC sheds light on the need for amending the ESA in the context of forest management. PERC’s work highlights how the act’s implementation has frequently obstructed responsible forest practices that are essential for maintaining ecological health, reducing wildfire risk and safeguarding human communities. …By reforming the ESA, we can strike a better balance between conservation efforts and responsible forest management.

Grangeville, Idaho — The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests are moving ahead with a logging project near Grangeville that was rejected two years ago by a U.S. District judge. An environmental impact statement is being prepared for the so-called “End of the World” project area, which is located about 6 miles south of Grangeville and would encompass about 49,565 acres within the Fish Creek, Cove Creek and North Fork White Bird Creek watersheds. The area is in the heart of Nez Perce-Clearwater Lower Salmon Wildfire Crisis Landscape and is recognized as wildland urban interface by Idaho County. The agency proposes precommercial thinning on 1,098 acres and timber harvest on another 17,262 acres to reduce hazardous wildfire fields and improve forest health. The project also includes 7,900 acres of prescribed burning to reduce hazardous fuels and create a fuel break along the Grangeville-Salmon Road to increase public and firefighter safety.

Robert Bryant

Gretchen Mehmel

Senior managers at both the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be held  to account for allowing the misuse of federal grants to facilitate logging in Minnesota’s wildlife management areas and aquatic management areas. Both agencies cooperated to fund and allow aggressive logging, which has devalued habitat and undermined the legitimacy of federal grants. It seems the only accountability that will work is to step outside the respective agencies’ control systems and go public, while relying on the Office of Legislative Auditor to do its work. The OLA recently announced a special review of DNR’s oversight of wildlife management areas. …But there still hasn’t been any substantive changes in policy… The solution is to stop treating wildlife management areas like conventional state forest — we need a timber harvest system for WMAs that considers the best interest of the critters, and not just profit-seeking timber companies.

Washington State University is working with four local community colleges to improve tree canopy cover in several urban areas throughout the state. The five-year project, designed to increase resilience amid a changing climate, is supported by a nearly $1.8 million Inflation Reduction Act grant from the USDA Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Program. WSU researchers will collaborate with faculty and students to create thriving urban forests in neighborhoods near those schools. …Partners at the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) hope the project will result in a more diverse and skilled workforce while inspiring colleges throughout the country to embrace similar approaches. …“A lot of these students are not necessarily on environmental science career tracks,” Joey Hulbert, at the WSU Puyallup Research & Extension Center and the project’s principal investigator said. “It’s a good opportunity to inspire them to work with trees and reach them before they really decide on a career path.”

Technology giant Apple has partnered with the Salt River Project to thin 30,000 acres of forest in the next decade, including most of the watershed of the C.C. Cragin Reservoir. Reducing the tree densities on that crucial watershed will not only save the 15,000 acre-foot reservoir – it will save about 1.8 billion gallons of water over the next 20 years, according to the SRP. “Apple’s leadership… will help protect Central Arizona communities and the water supply for the Phoenix metropolitan area,” said Elvy Barton, SRP Water and Forest Sustainability senior manager. “In terms of acreage, this is the largest corporate investment in Arizona watershed restoration efforts. This investment is critical because it addresses the wildfire risks of an entire watershed.” The 64,000-acre watershed of the C.C. Cragin Reservoir is among the most critical projects. A fire on the watershed could cause massive post-fire flooding that would fill the reservoir with mud and debris.

Invoking the names of some of California’s most devastating fires ― the Carr Fire, Camp Fire and Dixie Fire ― officials gathered in Redding on Thursday to mark the completion of an expanded air base in Redding they say will be the only one of its kind in the world for battling wildfires. The new base for reloading and refueling air attack planes used to fight wildfires will more than double the number of firefighting aircraft it can accommodate and the amount of fire retardant that can be loaded on aircraft, officials said Thursday. …Before the expansion, the air base had the capacity to only fill two air tankers simultaneously. Officials expect to increase the amount of fire retardant used at the air base. In 2021, the air base used 3 million gallons of fire retardant. With the expansion, that will increase to a capacity of 6 million gallons, according to the forest service.

UTAH – Approved last year, the Ashley National Forest Aspen Restoration Project aims to improve aspen health in the forest by making sure there’s an even distribution of ages. The Forest Service says Ashley aspens skew older right now, which makes the population as a whole more vulnerable to catastrophic fires or other disasters. Both logging and planting are among the tools the Forest Service authorized itself to use to restore younger trees. But four environmental advocacy organizations say “restoration” is a misnomer. “Their idea of ‘restore’ is to cut down aspen trees in roadless areas,” Mike Garrity, executive director at the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR), said. He said his organization has sued the Forest Service more than anyone else. AWR sued the Forest Service together with the Center for Biological Diversity, Native Ecosystems Council and Yellowstone to Uintas Council in federal court April 24.

Nick Smith

Actively managing Washington’s state trust lands and using locally sourced wood is a far better climate solution than leaving forests unmanaged. It is also better than “leasing” these public lands to private interests so polluters can keep polluting. The ongoing campaign to shut down these public working forests ignores the fact that timber harvesting is already prohibited on roughly half of all state trust lands in Western Washington. …These “protected” lands have abundant old growth and mature stands, but also tend to be unnaturally overstocked and vulnerable to carbon-emitting wildfires, insects and disease that increase tree mortality and decay. …If consumers and business are not using wood that’s grown, harvested and made here in Washington, we experience “leakage” effects, such as the importing of wood products from other countries, and “substitution” effects where more carbon-intensive projects, including concrete and steel are used instead of wood. These factors can’t be disregarded in the pursuit of a narrow political agenda.

In addition to more dry eastern Oregon wildfires, we’re likely to experience more wildfires in the wetter western part of the state. “Wildfire is not an ‘if,’ but a ‘when,’ living in Oregon,” said Alison Green, a spokeswoman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal. …Because of all this, the Oregon State Fire Marshal wants Oregonians to create more defensible space around their homes. That is more area between the house and potential wildfire, where vegetation has been modified to reduce the threat and help firefighters defend the house. mThe state fire marshal has set up a number of new programs to help: One involves bringing wood chippers into vulnerable areas so people can chop-up their yard debris for free. Another helps communities clear combustible fuels out of greenway spaces.